Dying Beyond Death
by Azelf1717
Summary: Demyx falls in his fight with Sora, and expects to die. He doesn't. Instead, he finds himself in another world with a timid girl that quickly becomes terrified of him. With his real intentions unknown, he holds the girl hostage in her own home as he goes about his own agenda. All of these events seems to happen by chance, but the reality behind it all is darker than it seems.
1. A Prologue of Death

**Azelf1717: Please note this will be the only A/N. Okay, the summary may hint at what will happen, but I won't. I've always liked serious fics about what really happens in canon over those fics that are about highschool romances, not that there's anything bad about those, but at some point I just decided to write one myself for other people to read. Writing or reading; they're something that everyone on this site enjoys, so I thought this would be fun for everyone. I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything mentioned of the Kingdom Hearts franchise. **

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><p>This had to be one of the greatest days of Nobody life yet… not. No it was not one of Demyx's good days. Good days were defined as temperate lazy days, days of which he had recon missions that were incredibly easy, and the ever holy <em>vacation<em> days. This was definitely not one of those days. Why?

Because this was an active, adrenaline-flaring, blistering hot day with a horrible,_ horrible_ mission.

_'Why did they choose **me **to go after Roxas?'_

Demyx was currently in a fight against Roxas, or rather "Sora", and things were not looking up for him. No, no, no, no things were not looking up for him. When he first approached Roxas he had already taken into account the fact that he would most likely attack him. He had been with Roxas on a few missions before, so he knew that he was easily provoked. Before he even seriously thought of carrying out the mission he had been assigned to he thought of all of the possible outcomes of this encounter. He even planned some actions out in case Roxas was with those other two he saw in the Underworld, which turned out to be what happened.

He was prepared.

He was there doing his job.

He was also getting his ass kicked.

Demyx turned in place, and jumped out towards the direction that the weakened dog-man was in, geysers shooting out pressurized water behind him as he zoomed in the air. The duck in his path got out of the way in time, but he managed to nail his main target nonetheless.

This turned out to be bad because the duck immediately healed his companion to full health.

Demyx told the superior members that he wasn't cut out for this job. He even told the Superior himself that this wouldn't work. They just wouldn't hear it. Why Xigbar suggested that he be the one to confront Roxas he had no idea. The mission involving Hades in the Underworld was one thing, but fighting Roxas? Demyx was no fool. He knew that he was sent to Roxas on purpose. The answer as to why simply eluded him. He could tell that someone needed to check if Roxas was on the right track collecting hearts. That he got. He also understood that Roxas would fight any of the Organization members that he came across. Axel apparently going rouge because of that was proof. The one thing that he really knew well was that Roxas could fight. He could fight to the death. Why was he, the reconnaissance guy, the one sent to fight Roxas?

Maybe it was because if he were to be defeated he would be the smallest loss to the Organization.

Roxas came at him again, charging what was most likely his Thundaga magic. Oh how Demyx hated fighting against opponents that took his weak point into consideration. He just hated fighting in general.

Demyx strummed specific strings on his sitar in a pattern. Heavy weighted water orbs formed from the water vapor in the air and were now at his command. He started to release them from his power's grasp, letting gravity get a stronger hold of them and let them come down across the battlefield. A few landed on Roxas, effectively stopping the deadly technique he was preparing.

Demyx knew he couldn't keep counterattacking forever. As the battle went on both sides were getting weaker, and he was outnumbered. His target was Roxas. The other two didn't matter, but they kept getting in his way. He had to beat Roxas and bring him back to The Castle That Never Was. Roxas was the Organization's key to Kingdom Hearts. He had to keep collecting hearts. He couldn't kill him, and he most certainly couldn't get killed himself. The odds of him defeating them one at a time whilst holding off the other two were beyond low. His powers worked to his advantage in attacking multiple opponents, but one of them would always slip out of the way just in time to help the others.

He couldn't keep this up for much longer.

He started to rapidly strum his sitar strings, and began leaping towards Roxas. When he got close to Roxas he positioned himself back-to-back with him as he played a melody on his weapon. Just as he turned around he found Roxas looking at him, and then Roxas hit him pointblank with that Keyblade of his.

Demyx flew back from the force, and he made sure to scream like he felt bothered by the pain. He noted that acting like he had emotions still threw Roxas off a bit at this point, so he made sure to continue doing so.

He landed back on his feet and had geysers of water shoot out in a circle around himself. Roxas had come back over to him in the hopes for a direct attack, and as a result he instead got hit with the geysers. He knew that Roxas had noticed that he had a habit of attacking right after being hit, so the younger had probably thought attacking when anyone else would avoid their opponent would catch Demyx off guard.

Demyx didn't have an emotional guard in the first place.

Roxas quickly regained his composure and was at him again. The dog-man that the other two kept referring to as "Goofy" followed Roxas's lead. Demyx wasn't about to let them land a hit this far in the game. He jumped into the air and charged at the two with geysers that he made appear behind him. When they were close enough he slowed in the air and the geysers passed him by. Both of them got hit at least once by the surprise attack, and he would have been relieved if he had a heart to know that the dog-man's shield attack was halted before he could throw the thing.

Roxas, once again, was back on his feet. He stood in front of the dog-man, guarding him as he struggled to get back to his feet. The Keyblade in his hands crackled warningly as an electric current went through it. Demyx quickly readied some water in his sitar and swiftly began calculating his next move in order to prevent Roxas from ever hitting him with that magic he was preparing.

What he didn't count was the duck blasting him with a form of Thunder magic.

With the water he was building up for an attack as a conductor Demyx received even more damage than he normally would from the magic he was already weak against. He fell to his knees from the sheer destruction it caused, and he had to use his sitar to support himself. Why didn't he notice that the duck's odd disappearance? Was his body really becoming so strained that even his soul couldn't notice what was happening around himself?

He looked up from the ground, and if he had a heart, it would have stopped.

Roxas stood in front of him and with his Keyblade he hit him in a diagonal slash.

Demyx soared back from the blow, and just barely managed to land in a crouched position. He quickly scanned his position, panting all the while, and realized that he was standing where he first appeared. Roxas watched him, both of his companions at either side of him.

As he was picking himself up he heard the sound of his water magic reacting to something next to him and looked in its direction. When he realized what was happening he was as close to horrified that a Nobody could ever possibly be.

His sitar, the ever loyal Arpeggio, vanished from his hand.

He brought his hand closer to his face as if to double check what had just happened. His analytical brain quickly came to the correct conclusion as to what was happening, even though it itself was barely believing what he saw, and he clutched his spinning head as tightly as he could.

"NO WAAAAAY-AHHh, uhhahhhh…!"

His scream pierced through the air, and his last screams faded away with him as the very darkness that composed him began to fade into oblivion. The water magic that was a part of him came right underneath of him with a ping sound. The water spread all around him and he spent his last moments staring down at the ground as the water rose back into the air above him.

This was his final moment. This was when he would truly fade away into nothing. His body was destroyed and his soul, too.

That's what he was expecting, so feeling his body piece back together and then landing on something soft was not what he predicted before falling into unconsciousness, unaware of everything.

Unaware of the fact that he was not dead.

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><p>"<strong>Keyblade wielders are generally the only people to ever successfully dive into their heart, but you'll do this. Just this once."<strong>

She was falling. There wasn't a surface to fall to, neither was there a source for her to fall from. She was simply falling.

It didn't feel like she was falling through the air. It felt different, as if she was falling through something solid. The first thing that came to her mind were rocks, but she knew that was impossible. How could she be falling through rocks without feeling the pain of being crushed to death?

She didn't know how long she was falling. It was like she had done it before, many times before, with the same results.

Nothing. Just falling.

That isn't what was happening today though. No something far different was happening today. The sensation of slipping through mountains of rocks began to fade, and a different sensation slowly overtook her. It was much softer than what she felt it was supposed to be. No, maybe softer wasn't the best word. It felt… slicker? It most certainly didn't feel solid anymore.

She decided something was wrong, no, not wrong, something was different. A voice in the very back of her mind whispered that this was something that had never happened before, but she wasn't focused on that. Everything seemed so blurry. It was blurry like it really wasn't happening, but she knew it was. This was reality, even if she couldn't make any sense of it. As she thought about how this could be, she felt her eyelids twitch. This is when she realized that her eyes were closed. Why were her eyes closed? She felt as if they had been open this entire time, but somehow they weren't.

She would never know it, but by opening her eyelids in this exact moment she would start what would become a very complex chain of events that would change so much more than just her life.

Water.

Water, she was falling through water. She was falling through water, but she was capable of breathing. She felt air coming through her nose just as it normally would when she breathed actual air. She felt like she should question how all of that was possible, but the feelings blurred away.

It didn't feel straight; reality. Reality didn't feel as straightforward as it normally did. It felt as if everything was simply… flowing. Maybe not forward, but not nearly as direct as it did every day.

She continued falling, watching the mysteriously illuminated water swirl by her. She was so dazed that she only realized that she had landed on something when the sensation of the water swirling ceased.

She looked down at her feet to see the ground. It looked like it was a sort of sandy texture maybe. She felt like she knew what she was standing on, but she couldn't think of what it was. The name of what she was standing on was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite catch it.

She raised her foot to kick the ground underneath her, to see if she could possibly disrupt the bottom and confirm if it was actually sand, when the ground suddenly shattered underneath of her. She watched it scatter into the suddenly air-comprised sky and a bright light came from under her grounded foot.

She stared, dumbfounded, at the stained-glass floor she was standing on.

The floor was like stained glass, colored multiple varieties of purple, a color of which she was very fond of. Oddly, she found that she liked each shade displayed. The floor was decorated with various circles and a few outer rings. This platform was... familiar. It wasn't just the design that she was familiar with, but everything on this platform seemed very familiar to her. What was in the center of the entire flooring shocked her the most, for it was far beyond just familiar. In the center of the stained-glass flooring was a deeply illustrated image of_ herself_.

The image was a complete mirror of herself, right down to her very pores. As she looked at the image, she realized that the image was wearing clothing that she had in her very own closest, her favorite clothing at that. Her lookalike's face was painted forward, so the disturbingly vacant facial expression the image had was completely visible to her. Behind the image's head was a small group of seven empty circles inside of one large circle. For some reason, she felt as if those circles should have something in them. Something had to have been there. Why did she feel like people should have been in those circles?

Even though almost all of the platform was purple in color, there was a difference. There was a black colored shape weakly imprinted on the center of the floor, as if it were to look like it was a layer underneath of it all. It formed a shape that resembled a sort of a complicated cross. It had three sharp points at the top of it. The top was straight, but as it lowered it became rounder. She felt as if it was an important symbol of some sort, but she had never seen anything like it.

What caught her attention the most was the most insignificant thing. Behind the cross shape was another shape. It was also dark, but in contrast to the cross this image had a navy tint to it, almost blue itself. It was hard to see, but she thought that the shape almost looked like a person.

She found that she couldn't look at the details any longer. Not because it was too much for her to take in, or because it was too confusing. She had to look away because the platform started to violently shake. She steadied herself, the dazed feeling that had overtaken her quickly fading away. She was instantly on alert, taking everything in around her with better awareness. She noted that there were three pedestals at the edges of the platform. There wasn't anything else on the shaking platform besides herself, so as the floor beneath her shook she started to wonder about why that was.

Questions flooded through her mind like a cup of water spilling over. With each question that came she found even more coming along after it, and each one of them remained unanswered.

She didn't know where it came from, but something in her told her to take a look at the pedestals. Even though the floor was shaking at such a rate that it would probably make it hard for her to move, she knew that the pedestals were the only things that were there for her to actually do anything with. The idea seemed odd, but she had a feeling that if she did something with them she could find a way out of this bizarre place. She had no other choice.

She stumbled in the direction of the closest pedestal. She went about as carefully as she could, trying to ensure she wouldn't fall off the edge. It took her several minutes to get across the platform, and as soon as she got to the stone pedestal she held it in her strongest grip. She inspected it, but the only thing notable was an odd message engraved into it.

_Self_

_Will you work for only yourself and no one else?_

She looked the words over once again to see if she read that right, but it turns out she did. What did that mean though? This entire situation was very bizarre, but she found that she was actually bothered by these words more than she was the shaking. The concept of this question struck her as unbelievable. The idea of abandoning everyone she cared for in order to care for only herself sounded horrible. Who would bother to write that, here of all places?

She shrugged off the question. For some reason it just bothered her. She just didn't like that question. She would never do that; she had people she cared for.

The platform she was on started to shake even more violently than it was already. The pedestal in front of her suddenly fell off the edge, and she worriedly stepped back with a quiet gasp. An odd chill ran down her back. Once the chill left a sharp panging in her chest replaced it, but she found that she couldn't focus on it. The shaking was getting worse by the moment, and she felt as if she had to do something fast.

She started stumbling across the platform again, only this time it was harder to do so than before. Her legs started to feel like they were jelly and every time she stopped to rest them they would just hurt even more. Strangely, it didn't seem to do anything else.

She was walking steadily to the closest pedestal, the one that was right above her mirror image's head. By the time she made it to the pedestal she felt as if she should have been sweating like she was caught in a fire, but her skin was completely dry. For a moment she wondered about that, but she decided to forget about that in favor of focusing on the pedestal in front of her. The stone pedestal in front of her also had writing engraved upon it, and throughout the tremors, she managed to read what it said.

_Duo_

_Will you work for both yourself and him?_

All of the questions that would have come to her mind were halted before they could.

The tremors that happened before this moment were more like mere quivers in comparison to the quake that began. The shaking became extremely violent, and she found that her grip was just barely holding her in place. She felt as if everything around should have fallen apart, but nothing did. The magnitude of the shaking overwhelmed all of her senses. It took all of her concentration to allow her to see straight.

What felt like minutes later the shaking reached its peak, and suddenly everything was underwater once more. The shaking came to a halt, and as confusion overtook her, she loosened her grip on the stone pedestal. Just as suddenly as the area becoming submerged the words on the pedestal in front of her started to glow. The light remained weak, almost like a flashlight. She hesitantly looked at the light before she reached out to grip the pedestal, scared of what could happen next. However, as soon as she made contact with the pedestal, the light instantly burst out. The light illuminated the water around her, and everything became a white blur.

The sensation of the water swirling around her as she started to float instead of fall was the last thing she felt before everything went dark.

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><p>Demyx landed with a soft thud. The thud was so soft that he didn't even notice it happening; no one noticed it. As no one noticed, no one noticed that he was fast asleep instead of unconscious, and no one noticed that all of his wounds were somehow healed. Something very odd was happening, but no one noticed.<p> 


	2. To Meet

"AHHH!"

In a small town in a small house a girl in her very late teens bolted up from her bed with a scream. She started to pant heavily, sweat rolling down her body as she began to realize what just happened.

It was a dream.

It was all a dream. The falling, the water, the platform, her parents- all of it was just a dream. She slowed her panting, and sat in place for a few moments.

First day alone and she was having nightmares. That was simply marvelous.

Heather wiped her forehead and successfully smeared the sweat on her forehead all over her hand instead of actually getting it off of herself. A bit disgusted with that thought, she looked woefully at her hand before she set it back down on her bed.

It was her first day on her own and it looked like it was not going to have a good start. Normally she didn't ever stay in her house alone, but this was a special case.

Around two weeks ago she and her parents were going to the nearby city's mall promotion. They were having a raffle giving off some prizes and her father was the only man she knew that loved to participate in raffles. He didn't care what the prizes were; he just liked the suspense. Her mother had been interested in an opening sale in a store there, so it was pretty much settled that they were going there.

Heather wasn't all that interested in the majority of the stores, so she decided to stay with her father. It was one of those raffles where they had numbered balls inside a machine that a person would turn until one of them came out. The price to try it was free for the first attempt. They then charged money for any more attempts, but her father would have no part of that. He'd always said the fun was in the suspense. Trying any more times would be considered more like gambling to him.

Heather tried the machine first. She spun the machine and she got a number that didn't earn anything. She moped for a brief moment after that because it was one number off from a monkey stuffed animal she liked. Her father laughed at her, and then tried it out himself.

He hit the jackpot.

The scene that ensued involved a lot of disbelief before it eventually turned into sheer joy. The prize was a month's stay at an expensive hotel at a tropical island for two. Whenever her mother came over to see who had won the raffle she couldn't have been any more excited to hear it was her dad.

Her parents had never had a honeymoon. They spent all the money they could on their wedding, which even then wasn't much since Heather's grandparents couldn't help pay for it, so they were never able to afford a honeymoon.

Her parents were both concerned about her staying alone, but she wouldn't let them be. She was eighteen years old; a legal adult. It was completely alright for her to stay by herself. She wasn't about to let her parents give up that once in a lifetime opportunity just because she was scared to be by herself. She tried to hide that she felt that way at first, but they knew her too well. She would be going to college in a year and she had to learn how to be alone even if she was a little scared. Of course that's what she told them.

In reality she was scared out of her mind.

Heather was always a bit of a timid person, but she tried not to let that get the best of her. The people she was raised around always tried to encourage her to do things that she felt were frightening, and over time it begun to work. Somewhat. She learned from years of experience that she had to do things while scared even if she had the urge to cry at the prospect of them. Sometimes when she chickened out of something scary something even worse would happen in return. That was what scared her the most, and in effect scared her into doing things she was afraid of.

Her parents had left last night, promising that they would contact her regularly and that they would absolutely try to figure out what program they could use in order to see each other face-to-face during the December holidays with a computer. Yes, this would not only be the first time she was truly alone, but it would be her first holiday without her parents as well.

They would be gone the entire remainder of the month, and would be back around a week after the New Year started.

This left her all alone in her home.

Heather decided that she had spent enough time simply_ sitting_ in her bed, and got up. She didn't care to change out of her pajamas since she already knew that she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

She went in her kitchen to prepare some sort of breakfast for herself, but before she did anything she took a moment to look at the nearby back door. Just like she left it the day before, it was locked.

She nibbled on her lip as she reached up into the cupboards, trying to decide what to eat and most certainly wasn't going to spend ten minutes checking every lock in the house. No, she would not do that again. She did that last night, twice, and she didn't need to do that again. All of them were securely locked tight, sealing her abode away from the world like the day before. They most certainly did not get unlocked last night. No, they most certainly didn't.

She decided that she wouldn't eat quite yet. She couldn't muster up much of an appetite anyway.

She would just go clean up for the day. Maybe she would do something relaxing for a few hours. Possibly knit for a little bit. Knitting sounded nice. Knitting a scarf seemed to be a good idea. Her other one was starting to thin. She would catch a cold going out to buy groceries if her neck and face weren't adequately covered.

She stopped biting on her lower lip and turned towards the other room. Her home wasn't very big, so the next room over that was connected to the kitchen made up both the dining area and the family room. The kitchen itself was barely large enough for three people to stand in there at the same time, let alone a place to eat. She walked out of the kitchen and then she turned in the direction of the bedrooms, intending to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

The sound of clothing rustling together stopped her in her tracks.

She froze.

'_What was that…?'_

No, no it was nothing. It was just her imagination starting up. This happened all of the time whenever she was scared after all. She imagined some of the worst things that could ever happen in life when she was just nervous about what type of apples she should buy. This was all just her imagina-

The sound of clothing rustling started again, only this time it was louder.

Heather backed up against the wall. It was all her imagination. It all had to be her imagination. It just had to be her imagination.

It wasn't.

At the angle she was at she could see that on the couch on the other side of the room lay a person. Not just any person. She noted fearfully that it was a man. Looking at his body's structure she realized that he had to be several years older than herself. He was wearing a pure black cloak that nearly covered him head to toe. The only part of his body that wasn't exposed was a part of his face, only that much since the hood on his cloak was over his head, and the hood shadowed his face too much for her to see it.

She pressed herself harder against the wall, like by doing so she would be out of sight despite the fact that she was wearing bright blue clothing against a beige wall.

It was her first day alone and first thing in the morning she finds a grown man on her couch.

She squinted her eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable. She could see him fine from this angle; it was only a matter of time before he saw her. The question was if he already saw her. She walked straight from her room to the kitchen, and while that meant she didn't directly pass by the couch that man on the couch could see her go by if he looked out the opposite side of the side she was walking on. In fact his head was on that side. He also could have heard her. She didn't exactly decide to be as silent as a mouse when she was just walking into another room. Did that man already know she was there?

It was quiet; too quiet. The only noises were the birds outside and this repetitive sound coming from somewhere.

The man didn't move. She didn't move. The seconds that went by felt like hours. Did he see her or didn't he? Even if he didn't why hadn't he moved from the couch yet? The noises in the background seemed to be less and less loud with each time her spastic heart would beat. She wanted to clutch her chest, but she didn't want to know what would happen if he was actually watching her. The birds chirping and the bizarre repeating sound continued on, unhindered by the sound of her heart within her chest.

The birds stopped chirping a few minutes later, and Heather found that she still couldn't move. It was like her body was glued in place. It was just her, standing as still as a statue, and that stupid noise that continued to occur every five seconds.

What was that noise anyway? If she were thinking straight she could probably figure out what it was. It sounded familiar. She'd heard something like it before. It was rhythmic, continuous, and wasn't all too loud. It was also very even. It continued on and on like it was someone breathing. It was just too different to be someone breathing. Now that she thought about it, it did seem to sound similar to someone breathing, but she could tell that it wasn't breathing.

It was… snoring?

Heather's body slacked for a moment in disbelief. Was that man _asleep_?

Well there was no way for her to know; unless she checked of course.

Heather trembled at her own thoughts, and she anxiously wringed her hands together. Going over there and checking was the only way that she would know for sure. On the other hand, if he _was_ awake then she would be in a lot of trouble. Well, she didn't have to get very close, she only had to get a little bit closer and then she could tell. She didn't have to be in his line of sight.

This was a bad idea and she knew it. She also knew that standing in place for hours was not only stupid because she would become sore but also stupid because he would wake up at some point, with her right there.

In this moment Heather summoned up all of her courage, which, sadly but unsurprisingly, wasn't all that much. She braced herself and began to tip-toe along the wall, a new step every thirty seconds.

After she felt she was close enough she hesitantly opened her eyes. She wasn't able to see the majority of the man's face, but she could tell that he was really snoring. The way his mouth was flapping up and down almost like a horse neighing couldn't be anything else. He actually did sound like a horse. How much throat tissue did that man have?

She tried her best to calm her frantic breathing, and began back-pedaling to where she was before. This was her chance. Her only chance.

She kept her eyes glued onto the couch, and felt the wall as she walked back. A few moments later she felt an indent in the wall. She slipped her fingers in the crack and she opened the door as quietly as she could.

She took in a deep, quiet breath, and walked backwards into the entryway, shutting the door in front of her.

She exhaled in relief. The challenge wasn't over yet, but at least there was a wall in between her and the man. She looked to the ground and grabbed the engraved handle in the wooden floor. She slid the handle back noiselessly and gently eased her legs into the hole. Her feet softly made contact with the ground underneath and she slipped the rest of her body in. In order to fit in the crawlspace she had to crouch herself to the ground.

Now came the hard part.

With what she was about to do, it would guarantee the man's awakening, heavy-sleeper or not. The only thing she could do was hide in here and hope he didn't find her. She had to do this, or the odds of him finding her when he woke up would increase. She took another breath in, reached up, and began to pull the bottom side of the handle to close the panel.

The old, jagged wood scraped against whatever it made contact with. The old parts she only knew were in there due to the sounds they made pierced through the silence like a chainsaw. She heaved as hard as she could in order to move it and when she finally got it to the end it collided into the wall with a huge _bang_.

Heather bit her lips and crawled behind the largest support beam in the entire space. All that she could do now was sit there and pray the man didn't find her. If he did… she shuddered.

There was a notable thud on the floor above her.

Her heart skipped a beat.

It was silent for a moment.

Then there were some more thuds, a little bit lighter than the first time, that were coming in a pattern, like he was looking around himself. It was silent for another moment, but that moment took a shorter amount of time than the one before.

The thuds were decently light, and they steadily began to move around. If the mental estimations she made in her panicky mind were correct, which she felt was necessary to doubt, then the man was sticking to the walls. That wasn't good. If he walked along the walls then he'd be more likely to find the crawlspace door and find her down there.

He continued walking on. With her mental map she could tell that he was walking towards the bedrooms, and true to her estimations she heard the annoying sound of one of the doors squeaking. He didn't seem to move after that, and barely a moment later she heard the door squeaking again, this time as he shut it.

He did the same thing to the next door. He stood in what was probably the door frame for an instant and then shut the door again. He walked away from the door he was at and did the same thing to what she estimated was her bedroom door. Then he did the other one, shutting the door closed when he was done, just like the time before.

Only this time she didn't hear him walk away.

The thuds stopped. There wasn't a single sound, not even a creak of an old floorboard pressured by his weight. Nothing.

Her heart began to pound in her chest. What was he doing? If he wasn't making any noise then he wasn't moving. He had to be doing something, or thinking of something. Why was he even here in the first place? If he was in the house then he had to have been outside it at some point. Didn't he see how small this place was, and that it was in the middle of nowhere?

Heather didn't realize that the facts she had just thought of could be an advantage to someone that wanted to rob a home, but she wasn't even thinking of robberies at this point.

That man still hadn't moved.

It was like he just suddenly turned to stone where he stood. There were no more thuds. There wasn't_ any_ sort of noise anymore. The pipes around her were soundless, the air vents didn't seem to be running, and if the birds outside were chirping she couldn't hear them from in here.

Everything was still.

Seconds sped by and nothing seemed to happen.

She wanted to hear something. Any sound; any creak, any squeak, any groan, any squeal, _any sound_ at all she wanted to hear. She wanted to know where that man was. She wanted to know what happened. She wanted to know what she was supposed to think of. She wanted to know why he chose to come into her house in the first place. She wanted to know why in the world she hadn't been smart enough to bring a phone down here with her to call for help because right now she _really_ needed it.

There was a sound. A little creak that wasn't that far off. The sound of soft rustling and a rhythmic puffing sound met her ears.

The man was right behind her.

She felt her face lose color. She couldn't breathe.

There was more shifting behind her. The man crawled around her and then they were face-to-face. She, fully exposed, and he fully covered by his cloak.

He just stared at her. She couldn't see his face at all. All she could look at was the area his shadowed face was at. The urge to bite at her lip presented itself again, but she couldn't do that. She couldn't move.

The man in front of her cleared his throat, and she jumped in surprise. Was his voice light?

"Uhh, err, hi there!" The man in front of her said with a shockingly boyish voice. She had met teenagers with a deeper voice than him.

Hi there…? He didn't say anything other than that, like he was waiting for a reply.

She remained silent, and the man in front of her seemed to squirm.

"Uhm…" He started, and then he sighed before he continued. "Look. I didn't mean to scare ya'." He explained. He reached out to touch her shoulders, but she recoiled away. His shoulders slumped before he tentatively brought his arms back to his side.

"Honest." He tried again, this time keeping his animated movements to himself.

She stayed silent once more, and this time she scooted back a tad, attempting to be subtle with the process of moving away from him.

"It's the truth. I don't really know how I got here, and I was wondering if you knew. It can't be that I just appeared out of nowhere." He said again, this time obviously waiting for a reply.

This time Heather couldn't stop herself from biting her lower lip. She was too afraid to say a word. She was barely breathing precisely. The man in front of her sighed again, but unlike the first time his sigh almost sounded a little bit comical in nature.

"Well my name is Demyx. What's your name?" He asked.

She nearly gulped.

"H-Heather…" She said. The only reason she actually spoke was because she was fearful of what would happen if she didn't comply with him.

"Alright then, Heather, I suppose you better get used to me. I won't hurt you or anything. I promise. I don't normally do this in this kind of situation, but I don't have anywhere else to go. It looks like we're roommates now!" Demyx said, his voice apparently joyful, as he grabbed her shoulder with his right hand.

This is where Heather really gulped. She looked at the hand on her shoulder and then to the area where his face was hidden. The world seemed to distort together for an instant. The urge to bite at her lip was intense, and she didn't know how she overcame it. She looked at the large hand on her shoulder again and she knew that the man in front of her felt the shudder that went through her body. His hand twitched after all, she felt it. She looked back at what was the man's concealed face and found that she had a hard time even seeing the shadows.

The faint glimpse of his pale chin was all she could make out before her vision became black and she felt herself fall over.


	3. To Negotiate

Heather didn't know how much time had passed since she had fainted. It took her some time to remember what had happened to her, and when she did she nearly fainted again. She didn't know what happened after she fainted, she didn't remember a few things _before_ she fainted for that matter, but whatever happened led up to where she was now.

Another thing she didn't know was where that man went. She knew that he said his name was Demyx, but she didn't exactly have her full trust in the stranger that wore all black that she found asleep on her couch. Then again she had never heard such a bizarre name before. It didn't make much sense to her as to why he would call himself that of all things instead of something like 'Bill' if he actually was lying. Maybe telling her such a freaky fake name was meant to throw her off. Then again it could be a cult name. Then again he could just be insane.

That was something she didn't want to waste her time thinking about. She was aware that she didn't know quite a few more things about her situation besides those ones she had thought of, but she did happen to know a couple of important things. One was that her arms were itching like mad and it was driving her insane. Two was that she was blindfolded. A third was that she was gagged. Four was that she was tied to a chair.

That made her know only one thing for sure, and that was that she was being held hostage in her own home.

The average person would become scared when they were held hostage. Heather was an average person, and scared she was indeed. For the first time in her life she was a damsel in distress. Now, a proper damsel in distress would feel fright unquestionably, but that damsel would manage to plan her escape. She would control her emotions and would take notes of everything that happened around her. She would memorize her prison's layout. She wouldn't let herself be manipulated by her captor. Then, in the very end, she would be prepared to work with or without her respective hero in order to escape what would have been her cruel fate. Such a courageous and intelligent woman would be a truly remarkable person remembered for times to come, even if only in history books.

Heather did not fit that description.

She was terrified. She was so terrified that she couldn't work herself to do much of anything at all besides breathe. Even though she recognized that she didn't have to be consumed by her emotions in this situation she also recognized that there was just no way for her to change the fact that she was. She had felt fearful her whole life, but she had never felt fear like this. There was no reassurance. There was no way out. She felt like a helpless little girl. She_ was_ a helpless little girl. Eighteen was legally an adult in her area yes, but legality meant nothing to a person's real mentality.

She was a terrified teenage girl and there was nothing to change that.

Had the man robbed her house? The question had crossed her mind a few times, but she was incapable of answering it. She had no way to know after all. She couldn't see her furniture missing. She couldn't get up to feel if it was gone.

The man's intentions were unknown to her.

Other questions invaded her mind. Some of them were disturbing while others were silly little things created from her paranoia. One of them was when she actually wondered at one point if he had really returned moments before, had started a fire in her house, and it was only a matter of time before she turned to ashes with the building. If that were true, she'd smell the smoke. Another one was that he was actually standing right by her and was just staring at her. The rarely heard from rational side of her brain told her that couldn't be possible since she would hear him breathing in that case.

She didn't know what chair she was in. She could tell that she was tied to a chair, but she couldn't identify it as one of her house's chairs. If she was tied to one of her chairs then she would at least be assured that she was within her own home. Somewhere deep inside of her she realized that it was wrong to keep her hopes up, but she kept on telling herself that she was in her own home. She kept telling herself how stupid it would be to go to the trouble of moving someone to a completely different location when that person could wake up at any moment only to tie them up on a chair there instead of chair that was only a few feet away. That calmed her down a bit, but that seed of doubt wasn't withering. Without that knowledge she really had no idea where she was, and no matter what she thought of she found that it scared her. That really scared her.

Where could that Demyx have taken her if she wasn't in her house?

She could be anywhere. She didn't have any way to know. It's not like she could take that blindfold off of her face and look to see where she was. It could also be any time of the day. It could even be night. She didn't know how long she had been unconscious. She didn't know long she had been conscious. She knew that the man hadn't been around since she had woken up, but who knows what else he had done to her while she was knocked out. She did her very best to ignore that thought, and nibbled on her lip. That man could've already done something to her. He could also be planning to do something to her right now and she had no way to know. She had no way to know anything.

A clicking sound broke the silence around her.

It stopped for a moment before it continued again. The clicking quickly turned into a jingling sound and then there was a pop. The jingling started again, but this time it was almost instantly stopped to be replaced with a swinging sound. It took the sound of a light bang for her to realize that it was a door opening and closing. A second after the door was closed she recognized the sound of repetitive thuds approaching her. As the footsteps got closer she heard that all familiar rustling along with it.

"Oh. So you're awake."

It was Demyx.

Heather remained silent; not that she could speak with the gag over her mouth in the first place.

She heard the sound of his cloak shuffle again, and she deducted that he had moved closer to her. The rustling sound his cloak made gently before was now louder as he performed some sort of body movement that was more complicated than simply walking. She wondered what it was for a moment before she felt what had to be some of his_ hair_ on her face. Not just any hair, it felt like individual strands of hair; long hair. He was leaning over her.

"Well then Heather, I guess you would like it if you could get up right now, huh? Stretch your legs a little. Everyone needs to get up and move around after sitting for a long time, trust me, I know. Oh yeah, sorry about the angle I put you at, your back must be_ killing_ you by now. I'm pretty clumsy when it comes to restraints I guess…" He said casually.

Heather nibbled on the inside of her lip behind her gag.

"Well now, in order to get up the question is if you want to get up or not." He said.

She remained quiet, hoping that if she didn't show any obvious reactions to his taunting then he would be more inclined to stop. He _was_ taunting her right? That boyish voice, the casual attitude, it all had to be his way of mocking her. She'd been teased before. If she didn't entertain him then he would stop. Maybe if she were to act completely worthless to him then he would just forget about her.

"Well?"

She squeezed her eyes shut behind her blindfold.

"Do you?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Was he actually being serious about what he was saying? No he couldn't be… could he? She was still uncertain about his intentions, but she struggled against her bindings to nod her head affirmatively nonetheless.

He snickered.

She stiffened as she felt him reach his arms around her. She remained frozen as his hands reached her ears, and she started to feel tugging on the cloth around her eyes. He was actually taking off her blindfold. She waited anxiously for a few seconds, but the blindfold still wasn't off. She sat there, confused, and only a few moments later realized that the fact that her hair was scrunching up with the blindfold's knot seemed to be giving him some trouble with getting it off.

With a little bit of intelligible muttering he successfully removed the blindfold from her head and all of a sudden they were face to face. She bit her tongue on reflex in her shock. The only reason she could tell that they were face to face was because of the positioning of his head. He still had that hood up, so she couldn't make out any detail of his face. His entire head was hidden away in his cloak. How that hood on his cloak managed to shadow his entire face black in this lighting she didn't know. He was the only one really looking at a face.

"That's a start. I'll stop here for now. You'll have to be on your best behavior if you want to be untied." He said smartly. After he spoke he immediately straightened himself up and walked out of her line of sight. For the very first time today she felt thankful for something he did.

By turning away when he did he didn't get to see her shudder.

He scared her. She had been scared many times in her life, but she had never been so scared by a single person before. Well, technically, not since the boogeyman anyway, but she didn't even count that since it was just a fictional character.

Demyx was not.

Heather quickly looked around herself now that she was able to. With a little amount of relief she realized that she was in the dining area of her house. She was tied to one of the worst chairs in the house, but she was still in her house. Now that she looked down at herself she recognized the materials she was bound with as the rope and suspenders from the hallway closet.

It had sounded like Demyx had come from one of the bedrooms, and when he left a moment ago he went down the hall. It took him a few extra seconds before the he used a door again, so he had to be in her parents' bedroom. If he went into her bedroom then he would have opened the door as soon as he went down the hallway, and he wouldn't have gone down the hallway in the first place if he went to the other one.

The sound of a squeaky door opening along with the sound of light footsteps separated her from her thought process.

"I'm sorry for the trouble I caused." Demyx said as he emerged from the hallway, his voice still in that friendly tone. He stopped in place for a moment, scratched his arm, and then continued on.

"It's just that with my own situation I just can't let you do what you want right now. It's a bit of a policy. Now don't get upset; this is going to be pretty straightforward. Since I just met you I didn't know for sure if you'd go with the whole 'I didn't see you, you didn't see me' deal, so that's why you're currently tied up. Oh, uh, yeah, don't get your hopes up for that by the way; it's not an option."

He walked closer to her, and pulled the chair next to the one she was tied to out from underneath the dining table. The chair she in was facing away from the table, so he turned the chair he was in to face her. She looked at him expressionlessly as eyes could get as he sat in it backwards and casually propped his arms on the back of it.

"Personally, I don't like having to do this. It's a lot of work, and that's always a bummer." He shrugged his shoulders as he said that with a monotone. "The thing is that I actually have to do all of this work, so I suppose I shouldn't complain when this could be a lot worse. It's more of a problem for you really. I'm afraid you won't be leaving your place here anytime soon; if you get out of that chair in the first place."

Heather let her eyes drift away from him in discomfort. He was still in her peripheral vision, but with her head tied in place there was nothing that she could do about that. It was creepy looking at a shadow knowing that there was a hidden face behind it. It was like being watched by a ghost. She hoped that he was too busy talking to notice her movements. She wasn't that lucky.

"C'mon, don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you. I won't let you die of starvation, dehydration, or something." Demyx said in a reassuring tone, and then he added on what seemed to be an afterthought "Trust me on the dehydration."

Heather blinked her eyes very slowly in an attempt to calm herself, as it was the only action that she could really perform while immobilized. She turned her eyes back at him, hoping to catch a glimpse of his face, but discovered that the action she made had been a mistake. She couldn't move her eyes anymore. They were frozen in place like the rest of her body. She had the spine-chilling, distinct feeling that he was looking her dead in the eyes. She felt too scared to move anything anymore.

"I won't let you leave, but I'll let you live."

He leaned in closer to her face, and she knew for certain now that they were making eye contact. Saliva started to rush into her mouth. With the few inches separating them she could blurrily make out the shape of his face.

"Now it's just your choice." He said; his voice in that hauntingly friendly tone. "Will you be cooperative with me, or are you going to be a problem? If you don't answer soon then I'll have to answer for you. No pressure or anything, uh, y'know."

Heather remained speechless. She wasn't thinking over her response; she was just frozen. She couldn't move at all. She wanted to give him her answer, but with all of the restraints on her she found no way to communicate with him. Her mouth was gagged, and she couldn't find the energy within herself to fight at the restraints to move her head. She had absolutely no way to speak with him. Didn't he realize that she couldn't do anything?

In the very next moment he reached over again and loosened the rope around her neck.

Oh. He did.

"So?" He asked, leaning back a little on the already backwards chair.

She nodded.

"Alright then." He said.

He stood up from the chair and not so gently shoved the chair back into its original place. He turned in place and walked behind her. Her throat went dry. The bombarding of questions hit her once more as she felt his hands go along her back. She heard some off scrapping noises, and she only realized what he was doing when the bindings around her fell to the floor. He let out a sigh that sounded similar to one of relief as he walked in front of her.

This was the first time she got to see his cloak in detail. She had never seen this sort of clothing before. Length wise it covered almost his entire body, leaving only his boots uncovered. Although that changed as he pulled the bottom zipper of the double zipper up so his lower legs were exposed. He was wearing black boots that had unusual silver lining at the top. In exchange for strings the hood adjusters were made with silver beads. Above the upper zipper was an oddly sophisticated appearing silver chain. What unnerved her in particular was the stitching made on the cloak that outlined the crevices of his chest in disturbingly precise detail.

"There are going to be some rules you'll have to listen to. The rules are so that we basically don't get the other person mad or anything. Don't worry; I'll be following some of my own rules so I don't bother you. Well for you, number one is that you can't leave the house." He stopped for a moment and apparently looked at her paling face. "I know that sounds bad, but it really isn't. You have enough food for a few weeks; nothing to worry about there. Plus it's not like I'm going to steal you away from the world, so you'll be able to leave at some point. For now though, I'm sorry if you have any plans, but, well, you just can't show up…"

His voice started to become obstructed as he went on, so he stopped for a moment to clear his throat. He sheepishly rubbed the back of his covered neck before he continued on.

"While you're in here you can do whatever you normally do; I won't stop you from doing any of the stuff you have fun doing. Another one of the rules is that you can't contact anyone. At all. I might make an exception at some point, but that'll be pretty unlikely. If anyone contacts you then you just have to keep the conversation brief and keep quiet about me. I'm gonna' give you fair warning in saying you won't be the only one in trouble if you do otherwise."

He remained silent for a moment, letting the message sink in.

Even if he waited for an hour, she would still be having trouble just coming to terms with the first rule.

"The last thing really isn't really a rule, but a little notice. I'm going to have an eye on you, so don't take it too personally when you find that you have less time to yourself. Like I said, the rules can be a bit more lenient to you if you're doing the things that I tell you are alright to do. I'm not trying to be a bad guy, but that's just how things have to be for a while. That's pretty much it! See, nothing completely _horrible_. I'm not going to make you my slave or anything. Well, with that out of the way, is there anything you're confused about?"

Heather nibbled the inside of her lip nervously behind her gag.

"Oh, uh, right." He said and then reached over her. She felt like wincing, but she was too startled by his sudden movements to budge.

The gag around her mouth loosened, and she reflexively blinked. Demyx dangled the gag in front of her cheerfully before releasing it from his grasp, letting it fall onto the dining table. Now that she got to see it she realized that her gag was actually one of the table's cloth napkins.

"Now then, is there anything you don't get?" He asked.

She nibbled on her lip again in response, but she tried to make it as discreet as she possibly could. She let her eyes dart to her right side once again in her discomfort and simply hoped that he wouldn't notice her movements.

He did.

"C'mon, you don't have to be scared. I don't bite. If you have something to ask just ask." He said, and his relaxed attitude seemed even more casual when he added a shrug to his statement.

"..Uhm…" She started, but she had to look away again. She looked back at his direction and just hoped he wasn't making eye contact with her. "I was… uhm… what did y-you mean by l-less time with myself?"

"Oh." He said, perking up. "Well that one's easy. I thought it was pretty obvious since I haven't blown the house up or anything. You don't remember what I said to you before you fainted, huh? Well, I'm gonna' be living here with you for a while."

"...what?" She whispered.

"I'm going to be staying around in this town, in this house." He explained slowly, and that was the moment when she realized that she had spoken her astonished question aloud. He took a second to breathe. For him it was probably only that, a second, but for her it felt like minutes. Time was passing as it normally did. To her it was that every moment of silence was unbearable.

"I woke up here in the first place, so I decided that staying here would be the best option. I won't cause you any problems, and you won't cause me any problems. Simple, right? Plus, if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours. I'll make it up to you at some point; I promise." He said cheerfully, his voice ringing with playfulness by his last sentence.

She felt like gulping.

"Now..." Demyx casually spread his hand out in front of her in offering, unbothered by the chains on his cloak clattering against him as he bent down to her sitting level. "How about you show me around, huh?"

Heather bit her lip and hoped with all of her pitiful might that her tears wouldn't fall.


	4. To Start

This didn't feel right. No. Rather, this whole conversation felt fake.

"…Th-this door leads to the crawlspace, but I-I think you know that by now."

She could barely speak.

"Right." Demyx said with a nod. He bobbed his head in the direction of the hallway and made a pointing hand gesture with his thumb. "Those rooms over there are?"

She could barely think.

"Oh, uhm, those are the bedrooms, an-and the bathroom… Th-there are three of them… um, bedrooms I mean." She hurriedly explained, her brain failing to act in accordance with her mouth properly.

She could barely speak what she was trying to think.

He looked back and forth between the four doors surrounding him, as if looking at them for the first time. He continued to look at the individual doors one at a time as he proceeded speaking.

"So, which one can I stay in?"

Heather froze.

"Oh, u-um…" She started.

She knew that the man in front of her had to sleep, and she also knew that he probably wouldn't get much sleep on the couch; let alone agree to sleeping on the couch. The couch hardly had enough room for two people to sit on it. At that, whenever two people actually _were_ on it, it was more like they were sitting on each other rather than on the couch. If Demyx were to attempt to lay on it his legs would go over the armrest. She was barely able to fit on the couch herself and he was nearly a head taller than her, if not a head taller than her.

She had found him there on it curled up sure, but she was sure that he probably wouldn't be willing to do that again. If he wasn't sleeping on the couch then there were only two options. He was either sleeping on the floor, or he was sleeping in a bedroom.

Something told her he wouldn't be all that keen on using the rug as a pillow.

Why didn't he just choose a room that he wanted? Things would be so much easier if he wasn't pulling this unknowing act. One of the first things that she saw after getting the blindfold taken off of her face was him going into her parents' bedroom, so she didn't understand why was he acting like he didn't know what all of the rooms were. He was aware of her knowing that he had gone into all of the bedrooms; that she knew.

Well, he was at least aware of her knowing that he had been in her parents' bedroom anyway. She didn't know for sure if he knew that she had heard him moving around the house before she fainted, but the logical part of her brain told her that it would explain why he had masked the sound of his footprints when he was approaching her.

However he managed to silence the sound of his own footsteps anyway.

Ever since he had essentially forced her to get up from that chair he had her busy showing him everything in the house, from the front door closet to the kitchen shelves. Normally it would've been easy to show someone all of the rooms of the single-floored room within a few minutes. The house was only a little bit more than twelve-hundred square feet after all. She would point out the garage, step into the living room from the patio, point over to the bedroom hallway, and just with those three steps she would have shown that person everything there was to see.

Demyx wasn't that person.

He was making her explain every little thing that he wanted to know about, every detail that he picked up on, and every object that happened to catch his eye. Basically, he wanted to know almost every single aspect of the house.

The only things he wasn't asking about, oddly enough, were the things that she thought were important to wonder about. Questions about the things like the water supply, electricity, wall insulation, food, and the piping remained unasked. She thought he would want to know if he would freeze to death when the snow season hit or if he was going to be staying in a place with a hole in the roof.

What she considered to be the oddest thing was that for some reason he was mainly having her explain the things that he had most likely noticed already. At that, he had her explain those particular ones in high detail. He had to know that she realized this.

She just couldn't understand what he was doing. Why was he acting like he didn't know anything when both of them knew that he knew everything?

As confused as ever she looked up from her blank gaze at the floor to immediately see that Demyx was looking at her.

She quickly averted her eyes from him and fought the urge to bite her lip as she tried to remember what he had wanted. Didn't he want to know about the bedrooms? She would have to start replying to his questions quicker. She would do it if only to keep him from looking at her, and to keep her out of his mind as much as she could.

"N-not those ones. The other one, um, the one down the hall th-there." She stuttered.

"Ah cool; the one with the big bed!"

A million more questions flew to her mind with that comment as he cheerfully wandered off down the hallway, indifferent to her internal utter disbelief.

Did that man just contradict his entire act?

She stood there, purely stunned by his actions, any words running through her mind as far away from her lips as the ice caps were from the tropics. When she came to her senses she quickly rushed after him.

There was no way that she was going to risk getting him mad at her for not following him into her parents' room.

The thought of him alone in her parents' own bedroom was enough to make her shudder. It was bad enough that he had to stay in the house in the first place, but she couldn't let him stay in _her_ room; especially when she would be sleeping in it. She was not giving up her own bedroom to this man, and the other bedroom wasn't even up for consideration.

Her parents would understand.

If they ever knew.

The door to her parents' bedroom was wide open, and she hastily let herself in. Demyx was sitting on her parents' bed, almost hyperactively rolling around on it like he was some sort of earthworm. She simply stood in place, not making any action to indicate her presence. He continued on his bizarre behavior, undisturbed by her presence for quite some time.

He abruptly stopped. She blinked in surprise, and just like that when she opened her eyes she found that he had himself propped against the headboard.

"Doing that takes up so much energy…" He said in what was a bizarre mix of a grumble and a whine. He rolled his neck, and continued on talking to himself in an easier voice that she had to strain her ears to hear. "I guess I was just so excited to see a bed. A real bed! I can't believe-!"

"Eee!"

Heather yelped as she nearly fell face first to the ground, landing hard against the wall instead. She instinctively looked down at her feet to see the source of her accident; the long black boots that she had seen Demyx wearing. Blinking, she looked over to Demyx himself and tried to get a glimpse of his feet.

He didn't take them off while she had been in here for the last few minutes, and he had only been in the room a few seconds before she came in.

How did he manage to get them off so fast?

Forgoing her thoughts, she clumsily pushed herself off of the wall and brushed the newly formed wrinkles out of her shirt as a way to ignore the pain. There was bit of creaking from the direction of the bed, but she tried not to pay any attention to it. She knew it had to be the sound of the man on the bed moving.

"...so, uh, are you alright?" Demyx asked her.

"…yes, I'm fine." She squeaked in response.

What was wrong with her? She had been thinking into this situation with a lot of depth, and she was never the type to think too deeply into things. Plus, while she was easy to jump, she wasn't a regular klutz either. She only wound up hurting herself if she got too scared, not because she didn't pay attention.

Demyx being around was troubling her too much.

She expected to be bother by this; she expected to be really _really_ bothered by this. She just didn't expect to be so bothered that she wouldn't be able to control what she was doing. Being scared stiff as she stuttered over her words was what she expected, but she never thought that it would go this extent. He was just… he was just…

He yawned and clicked his tongue tiredly, his eyelids drooping.

…the man was just so scary.

Demyx returned to lying on the bed with a contented sigh, and rolled around on it in a similar manner of a lazy worm until he finally became comfortable.

He was just so… spontaneous. Unpredictable. He was unpredictable. He was acting like this was no big deal at all; like he wasn't holding an unwilling teenage girl hostage in her own home. He was behaving like he was just a guest, a friend coming to visit for a while. It was so odd.

Just a few days ago she knew that if she were to ever picture herself in the situation that she was in now, she would imagine that she would be relieved to have a captor as casual as Demyx was. That was a few days ago though.

Now she knew that friendly, or unfriendly she was still a hostage.

It felt just as bad to have a friendly captor then to have an unfriendly captor. Any captor would still be a captor just as a captive would always be a captive at the end of the day. Well technically, she couldn't be sure since she had never had any sort of captor besides him, but she didn't want to think about that. She just hoped that she would never be able to compare the two through experience.

What she did know for sure was that either way she would be scared, and she was scared right now.

She just had to keep calm. Keeping calm was the only thing that had saved her from frightening situations before, besides running from them, and as she couldn't run away from her own home staying calm was her only hope. She knew that the man was going to be here for a while, and she was just going to have to get used to him; even if he was as scary as the boogeyman.

No matter how terrifying his behavior was to her things could be a lot worse. Things could have been horrible. He could've been violent towards her. He didn't have to tie her up, but he even let her out. He could've just… killed her…

She forced those thoughts out of her head, and focused on the situation at hand.

Heather was a prisoner, and Demyx was her jailer. It was as simple as that.

Even as she watched him hop around the bed like a rowdy toddler she realized that the way he was acting was just making things harder for her. How could such a friendly, average Joe kind of guy be so frightening to her?

Demyx remained unaware of her thoughts. There he was, a grown man she had just met, nearly asleep on her parents' bed.

He had managed to sprawl out as much as he could on the queen sized bed, his limbs spread all in different directions, making him look like a giant 'X'. At some point in her thinking he had moved himself so he was laying on the opposite side of the pillows. If he was trying _not_ to sleep he was doing a very good job of it. While a part of his right arm was falling off the side, his entire head was hanging off of the bed. His right leg was barely avoiding the same fate as his arm. He honestly looked like he was going to fall off any second now.

She couldn't even understand why he acted like… the way he did. She didn't even know what she could call his behavior. So far he had been friendly, casual, and pretty laid-back.

Then again she had only known him for an hour or two; not including when they first met before he tied up her unconscious body. She still didn't know how long it had been since she had fainted. What was his point in acting like this? He didn't personally care about her, so why was he going to the trouble of trying to make her comfortable? Why was he doing all of this in the first place? With all of the new questions rolling around in her head those millions of questions that had been bothering her earlier came back again.

Why couldn't things be as easy for her as they were when her parents were home?

The room was nearly silent. With the absence of human voices and the natural noises of the world around them the only sound in the room was the unforgettable rustling of that horrible cloak of his. As time went on it would brush together regularly as his chest steadily rose up and down.

Heather merely stood at her place by the wall. She didn't feel like moving. She simply watched as Demyx lounged on her parents' bed like he had done so a million times before, and at some point she wondered if he remembered that she was supposed to be giving him a tour. There wasn't anything else for her to do.

One of the reasons for why she wasn't moving was because she wasn't dumb enough to try escaping, no; it was because she wasn't brave enough to even try escaping.

If she left the room on her own then there was a chance that he might take the action as her trying to escape, and she had no intention of finding out what he would do to her if she went against what he wanted. If she just stayed by his side until he said otherwise then she would be fine. All she had to do was listen to everything he said. She believed that it wouldn't be too hard. If the way that he was acting now was any indication, then she would be able to do what he wanted without a problem.

"Hey."

The aforementioned girl jumped in place and her eyes darted to where Demyx was sitting, watching her.

"There you are! Talk about getting lost in lala land. I guess I really did lose you there for a moment. I've been talking for a while now. Well, anyway, come on over here." He said, gesturing for her to come closer. "I know we just met 'n all, but that doesn't mean that you have to spend your time standing like a statue in the corner. You can't be antisocial around me forever."

Heather gulped, and against her hopes, he heard her.

"Aw c'mon." He said, his tone changing to that of a whine. "I already told you that I don't bite. If I did I would've bitten you already, and we wouldn't be having this conversation now. Well, me conversing to you anyway…"

She couldn't look him in his eyes. Instead, she directed her gaze down to her feet. She heard him shift on the bed.

She had the nagging feeling that while she wasn't looking at him, he was looking at her.

"Just sit down. Relax." He spoke, his voice calm. "Things are gonna' be rough for you in the beginning, and if you don't do anything about it, then these things are going to stay rough. The first step to making things easier is to take it easier. It won't exactly be a breeze, but you might as well speed up the process. It's all you can do, right?"

She remained motionless. While her face remained blank, it only remained blank because of her mixed emotions. Uncertainty overwhelmed her as every main option she had and every sub option she came up with seemed to always wind up with a losing outcome for her instead of winning one. There was simply no way around him. She was intent on remaining where she was standing, until his next words left his mouth.

"C'mon. I'm reeeeally bored."

Heather looked at him for a moment, his words slowly sinking in.

He was so unpredictable.

Wordlessly, she slowly moved closer to him, ignoring that his eyes followed her every movement. She approached his side, only to pass him by to sit on the old rocking chair across from his spot on the brown bed comforter. She tried to keep the old, creaking chair underneath of her steady as she looked at him, but all she could focus on was the odd mixture of both expectancy and anxiety that man was making her feel.

"Well you're within ten feet of me, so I suppose that's a start." Demyx said cheerfully. "So… uhh… do you play any instruments?"

She shook her head in reply, the urge to look away nagging at her.

"No? Uhh… so what are your hobbies then?" He asked in such an easy tone that it made her uneasy.

She nibbled on her lip and this time she couldn't resist that persistent urge to look away. It made her feel pathetic to know that he had to be staring at her while she had her head turned away from him, as if it hid her from him.

She was hopeless.

She expected him to speak up again, but all she heard was his cloak rustling. When she finally had the nerve to look out from the corner of her eye she saw that he was shifting his crisscrossed position on the bed. Almost immediately after she did so she saw a bit of his head move as he sighed.

"Alright, alright. It's obvious how uncomfortable you are. If you won't even talk about yourself then I'm guessing you won't be talking about much of anything. So I guess the question is when will you actually speak with me?" He said.

The question was rhetorical. Both of them realized that.

Heather felt all the more unnerved with his nonchalant inquiry, while she couldn't tell how Demyx felt. She couldn't tell what Demyx felt at all. It was almost like he was some sort of wall; an impenetrable wall without any sort of lock that could be opened with a key. Did all hostages feel this way about their captors?

His friendly gaze changed somewhat, and all of a sudden it was emotionless; almost like he was in deep thought. He couldn't be in deep thought. She knew he wasn't. It might have just been one of those silly gut feelings, but she felt that he was fully aware of every move she was making.

She startled as he stretched his neck. He made a curious noise as he looked at her for a moment before he continued stretching.

"Well Heather, how about this…" He started. "I can give you some alone time if that's what you want. This is probably pretty overwhelming. Are you interested?"

Heather remained silent, keeping her distraught sounds to herself as she hastily thought over what he said.

"I-I…" She stuttered. She cut herself off before she could stutter more, and then she continued, her shaking voice finally starting to become a bit steady. "I'm interested."

"There you go!" He said cheerfully. "See, you can talk all you want and it won't be that hard. Now, if you really want a few moments to yourself then I'll be willing to give you them. I'm not a slave driver, trust me. If you want a few minutes to yourself, all you have to do is stay in here quietly. Simple, right?"

That's it?

"That's it?" The words slipped out of Heather's mouth before she could stop them.

"Yep; that's it!" Demyx confirmed. "You can get a few nice minutes to yourself just for sitting around and being quiet. I'm pretty sure that you won't have much of a problem with that, being so quiet around me anyway."

He got off of the bed and walked past her over to the door. He pulled the audibly protesting door open, and turned to face her.

"Alright, you have a minute or so to yourself now. Breathe a bit; I won't be back too soon. I will be back though." He said, turning back to the door and exiting through it.

The loud click of the door knob meeting the wall pierced the now silent room, and she heard him walk away from the bedroom. All of her attention was suddenly focused on her hearing. She heard the sound of his footsteps as he walked further for a few moments, the floorboards creaking as he put pressure on one of his feet, and then the squeaking of a door in the hallway.

Adrenaline rushed through her body as she heard the door he opened click shut. Her body instantly felt energized from both the hormone and the emotions she was feeling. Her emotions were so strong that she didn't even recognize that she was feeling them, or rather, feeling anything. Her emotions had control of her free thoughts.

She had a chance, and she was going to use it.

She had to use it.

A few minutes passed. Heather was completely immune to the regularly occurring noises around her, the article in her hands one of the sole objects of her attention. She didn't run. She didn't hide. She just stood there, breathing, staring at the door.

That was what the rest of her attention was on. Her only purpose now was to do what she was thinking. There was no other purpose.

Only when the sound of a door creaking emerged did she pay attention to what was happening around her. She heard the click of a door shutting, and then the sound of footsteps getting closer. The sound of his feet got closer, closer, and closer until the sound of the door knob in front of her creaking replaced it. He then walked in, not actually looking at her. He was there; relaxed. He spoke, his own concentration on shutting the door.

"Hey. I hope you enjoyed your alone time. Sorry it had to be so short, but…" He trailed off, finally facing her.

In the decent amount of sunlight that was coming out of the blinded window behind her she was able to see him watch the dark metal in her hands glisten, and the gun in her hands made a warning clink as she pointed it up in the direction of his forehead.

"Don't move."


	5. To Fall Asleep

Demyx was in action before Heather could even blink. One moment she was standing there as daring as she had ever been, holding a gun to his face, and the next thing she knew was that he had pinned her to a wall by her wrists. Even though he had her fingers fully spread, the only reason she recognized that she had actually let go of the gun was the clunking sound it made as it clattered uselessly onto the floor.

Just as she recognized that it had fallen from her hand Demyx stamped his foot onto it, and he kicked it off to the other side of the room, leaving it out of her reach.

He practically had his body pressed against her. Only a few inches separated them. Those inches started to grow as she started to lose her balance, but she found that her balance actually didn't matter that much. He was gripping her so tightly in place that she couldn't even twitch, let alone fall over. His grip on her wrists was like iron. Instinctively, she tried to move, but the pain that followed made sure that she didn't try to do that again. She barely had enough room to breathe, and she was only capable of painfully gasping a small amount of air into her lungs instead of taking actual breaths. In the back of her mind, she felt that her trouble breathing was completely intentional.

Even though he only had her wrists pinned, each part of her body felt restrained under his control and pain shortly followed that restraint. It was bizarre that she was feeling these sensations in places he wasn't touching her, but she wasn't able to identify the cause of it.

It didn't feel like flesh and bone. It almost felt like… liquid.

Her already foggy mind swam as her brain wasn't able to keep up with all of the numerous sensations it was being presented with. The more she came out of her daze the more pain she felt. She was barely able to control her limbs under the unanticipated strain. Her entire body was under some sort of effect of this strain, but what was hindering her most was her wobbling legs. The muddled rational part of her brain was concentrated on that; the rest was focused on the pain. If she was actually thinking straight then she would've hoped that he didn't notice that weakness, but even if she had consciously hoped for it her hope would have been in vain.

She briefly noticed that he glanced at her legs for a short moment; a very short moment that she inexplicably managed to catch. He raised his head just enough to look at her face, then, unbelievably, he somehow managed to strengthen his already bone-shattering grip on her.

Heather cried out in pain. Her muddled senses were suddenly as clear as glass, and the unexpected pain his new clasp gave her was stronger than any other sensation she was feeling.

Her legs nearly doubled over in the new strain; the strain caused by the sudden lack of her nervous system telling them what they were supposed to do and what was actually happening to them. Her kneecaps started to knock together under the sheer pressure, and her feet gave out on her. The only reason she was still standing was the fact that he was essentially holding her in the air with his insane grip.

He stared down at her, the hood resting securely on his head hiding any sort of expression that was on his face. There was a sort of chill that suddenly ran down her back. It was like someone had just poured ice-cold water down her neck, or that had her upper back had been lit aflame.

Everything felt like a blur. She foggily recalled holding the gun in her hands, but that was it. With her parents' weapon of choice lying far away from her, out of her hands, she started to rationalize the situation.

The more aware she became of what had just happened the more afraid she became.

She had just crossed a line. She knew that there was a line there, and she had crossed it. She had crossed it, and she was going to have to pay the consequences for crossing it.

This man was going to kill her.

Demyx leaned his head down to her ear, and then he began to speak words that made her body shudder.

"I thought I told you to be good."

His voice was shockingly a lot deeper than it had been before. There was a sudden lack of the strain that was usually laced in it, and she found that it sounded a whole lot more natural than his typical boyish tone did.

"No, that's not right." He continued. "I specifically remember telling you to be good."

She gulped.

"The deal was pretty simple. I told you to stay quiet in this room, and that's just what you did. However, you acquired a weapon and tried to use it against me, which is _not_ a part of our deal. Do you know why? I told you to be good, and not to be bad. That was our deal." He said. His voice was unnervingly calm, and he spoke directly into her ear, making her ear itch from the heat.

He paused to lift her wrists higher, and in the process he lifted her higher, making them at eye level with each other. The feeling of the pressure leaving her legs almost made her feel relieved, but that almost relief faded when he put his strength back into his grasp around her wrists again.

"Now picking up that gun over there was stupid. It may have seemed smart to you when you thought of it, but it was stupid in reality. By doing that, you were bad. Being bad means that you _broke the deal_." He growled, all of the kindness that may have been in his voice previously was now lost.

She shivered, looking directly into the shadows where his face was hidden.

"I warned you about breaking our deal, and you did. Now you're going to have to pay the price for being bad, plus, you're going have to pay a bigger price for making me put more effort into this than I should have to."

With that said he let go of her and she clumsily landed on her feet. Before she could regain her balance, he had a strong hand clasped around her neck, suspending her blindly in the air. Not even a second later he raised his opposite hand, and before she could even tell that he had actually moved he punched her directly in the jaw.

Without his hand to hold her in place she was flung away from the force of his blow, unconscious before she even hit the floor.

* * *

><p>There was something very wrong about this situation. It wasn't a moral situation; that much was obvious. However, that wasn't what was bothering her. At first, it was just… hard to take in.<p>

Heather was tied up again.

She had woken up in restraints. It took her a moment to recognize her surroundings, and only after that did she realize her situation. She was bound, she was gagged, and she was blindfolded. She didn't know where she was, how long she had been unconscious, or how he had done all of this to her. She had a strong feeling that she was tied to the same chair as last time, and she was pretty sure that it was with the same restraints.

The only thing that was really different from the last time was that a few days had passed already.

This was not like the first time. Demyx was not letting her get up when he thought she was uncomfortable, and instead he only let her up whenever he deemed that it was necessary. Anytime he had her do anything at all was when he wanted her to do it. It was always when he felt like it; he wouldn't ever ask her if she needed something. In fact, he wasn't even _speaking_ to her, let alone asking her questions.

Before, he was a chatterbox around her, but now it was like she didn't exist. He didn't even acknowledge her whenever he was having her do something.

After a certain number of hours passed during the day he would have her eat and drink. He gave her different food every day, but it was guaranteed that he would give her water each meal. She wasn't allowed to eat a meal at the table, as that would mean untying her, so she simply ate whatever he gave her. She kept her feelings about this to herself. She was still blindfolded, so she wasn't able to tell what he was giving her until it was in her mouth. Most of the time she found it was some sort of fruit or a couple of vegetables, probably from her own refrigerator.

The only time he let her out of the restraints was when he brought her to the bathroom. He would normally bring her there after she ate, but he would pretty much lead her to the bathroom whenever he felt like it. Thankfully, he let her go in there alone, but she realized that the only real reason he actually left her alone was because he had already removed pretty much everything that could be a threat. Razors, medicines, and even some of the larger towels were gone. She noticed at some point that the window was sealed shut, with what she didn't know, but it was sealed.

He only let her stay in there for about a half an hour, and whenever that time was up he was knocking at the door. At least she was able to keep her personal hygiene up. Whenever he knocked she would immediately drop whatever she was doing, make sure she was decent, and open the door. Otherwise, she had a feeling that he would be coming in there, locked out or not. Not that she could lock him out. He probably had the key to the door after all, and even if he didn't he could always just kick the door down. It wasn't like the door was very strong after all; it was so old at this point that it was practically a swinging door.

With that in mind she figured that he probably wouldn't even need to kick the door to actually open it.

The door had always been a curtain more than anything else.

After that it was back to the chair. He didn't let her get up from the chair on her own, so naturally, she slept on it. She didn't have the ability to keep track of time, but she knew she had been spending a lot of time sleeping, even during the day. There was nothing else for her to do after all. It was either sleep, or spend all of her time thinking. It was bad for her physical health since she was sleeping so much, but mentally, it was a good thing that she was.

If she spent all of her time thinking then she would think about how pathetic she was.

With her situation the way it was now, the one thing she noticed more than anything was that Demyx never seemed to be around. Her ears were left untouched, so she was able to hear him wander around the house. She heard him move in certain places in a certain order, and he would often leave the house for long periods of time. Combined with the fact he came to her at what she felt were specific times, she could tell he had some sort of routine.

He gave her breakfast in what was probably the morning, ate before her, and once done he would leave the house for some time. Then he would come back around what she considered to be noon-ish; he would eat, and then he gave her something to munch on. He would generally leave after that, but on two days he stayed after that for a while.

His loud snoring informed her that during that time he was napping on the couch.

He still sounded like a horse.

After leaving the house when he finished eating lunch he would come back a few hours later. She assumed that it was probably dinner time when he came back. He would give her food, eat his own meal, and would stay the rest of the night. He would go to bed almost immediately after giving her something to eat, and then the cycle would repeat itself.

The only reason she was actually able to pick up on his schedule was because she had nothing else to do. If she wasn't asleep, and if he was in the house, then she would pay attention to whatever he was doing. Otherwise, she would never have noticed.

At the moment she was wondering when he would return. He had already given her a second meal today, so she had the inkling that he would be coming back to feed her again soon. It felt like it had been a few hours, and she believed she was getting better at guessing the time, therefor she felt that he should be back soon.

For a split second, underneath of her restraints, she shuddered. Her own thoughts were starting to concern her. She was becoming disturbingly accustomed to all of this.

She felt like a pet.

His pet.

She didn't understand why she had gotten that gun out in the first place. She didn't even know how to use a gun. It was hard to try to remember why she had decided to pick up that gun, but she was having harder time remembering her reason because she couldn't actually remember grabbing it. She couldn't remember it at all. It was like there was this gaping hole in her memory. She remembered Demyx leaving her parents' bedroom, and the next thing she remembered was him holding her against a wall.

She couldn't remember anything between that.

It wasn't like her to try to rebel against the things that scared her, and she was no way near brave enough to try to retaliate his actions. It was not because she was courageous; that was a definite no. She just couldn't comprehend why she would do something like that; especially when she had a vague idea of what the consequences would be. She didn't grab that gun because she seriously thought that she could do something against him… right?

Maybe the reason for why she picked up that gun was because she was desperate. Yeah. Desperate she could understand. Maybe she just couldn't handle what was happening to her anymore, and she just acted out on it without realizing it. She knew the gun was there. She knew that he didn't know that it was there and she took it as a chance. After she picked it up something happened and she just blocked it out. Trauma was something that she blocked out nearly instantly whenever it happened. It had to have been something like that. She reassured herself of this, it made sense to her after all, and she did her very best to ignore this nagging voice in the back of her head that told her otherwise.

She was startled out of her thoughts when she heard the back door squeak.

Demyx was back.

Right after she heard the door shut she heard him start to move around in the kitchen. She knew what he was doing. He was following his routine after all. He was going through the cabinets to get something for her to eat real quick, and then he would start to eat. His timing was pretty good today; she was just starting to get hungry.

He found whatever he was looking for, and the sound of his approaching footprints met her ears; twelve footsteps. She had memorized how many steps it took for him to reach her from in the middle of the kitchen. She already recognized it by pattern, but she only recently started to count. Maybe she should start to learn the difference between the sound of his left foot and the sound of his right foot. Counting would be boring in a few days.

He stood in front of her again, and she silently waited for him to remove her gag. A minute or so passed, and the gag was still on her mouth.

She stilled, confused. Why wasn't he taking the gag off? It contradicted his routine. When he came to feed her for the third time in a day he would always feed her first, and she figured he tried to be quick about it. He had to eat, too.

It wasn't like she was going to scream or bite at him if he took the gag off. Now that she thought about that, she started to wonder why she hadn't screamed yet. At this point it was completely out of character for her to_ not_ to be screeching or wailing for freedom. She was never a heroine. She was never a strong, bold girl that only felt a small amount of fear, and always found a way to conquer it. Fearing was something she did frequently, and she always reacted to it in a similar way. With how scared she was now, even more scared than she had ever been before in her life, how was it even possible for her to not be screaming at the top of her lungs, hoping with all her might that someone out there would hear her?

She should be trying to do anything she could to get out of this mess.

She should be begging him to let her go.

She should be crying.

One second she would think that she was getting used to this, but in the next second she would think the exact opposite. She just wasn't behaving like she expected she would. Maybe the stress of this entire thing was finally getting the better of her.

In front of her Demyx sighed, and she noticeably jumped in her restraints.

She had forgotten he was there.

What was wrong with her?

Probably both unaware and unaffected by her internal problems, Demyx went about removing the gag on her face. In two simple movements the gag was away from her face, presumably into his hands, and she felt him poke the bottom of her jaw.

She understood the gesture, and opened her mouth to allow the invisible morsel of food being presented to her into her mouth. She absently chewed on the newly identified berries, fully intending on drawing this action out for as long as she could. The more time she spent eating, the less time she would have to spend sleeping or thinking. At this point, anything different than that was a welcome change, no matter how trivial of a change it was.

She swallowed the food in mouth, and left her mouth a bit open. As she predicted he proceeded to put more food into her mouth, this time some type of meat. She guessed he would.

She realized at some point that he was feeding her specific foods. Every meal she either had a serving of fruits or vegetables, usually vegetables. Fruits apparently counted as dessert, because he wouldn't give her junk food. He would only give her a single serving of meat a day, and similarly, the same applied to dairy foods. While most of her food was varied, it was certain that she was eating some sort of grain food with each meal and that she was drinking water.

If there was any good thing about this situation then it was that she was eating healthier than she had ever eaten before; not that her diet before was unhealthy. After she consumed the meat he had given her, he had her eat bread. She chewed at a normal pace, knowing that she wouldn't get away with gnawing on the bread for as long as she did the meat.

Instead of giving her more food once she finished, he poured water in her mouth, and wordlessly began to untie her restraints. She remained still, doing her best not to trouble him. She didn't want to bother him. The complicated knots probably annoyed him enough already, and she didn't want to him to direct that annoyance at her.

A few minutes after he started the task, the ropes that previously kept her in place were now removed. She heard him set the restraints onto the floor, and she felt him remove the remaining ones off of her feet. Finally, he removed the blindfold on her head, allowing her to see him in all of his cloaked glory, and grabbed her wrist.

She followed his movements as he led her to the bathroom, and made sure to do the same as he did; not sooner, nor later. She didn't want to be bad. She watched, feeling a certain joy from being able to physically see something besides the blank cloth that was her blindfold, as he opened the door in front of them. She walked into the bathroom, unsurprised by the door closing shut behind her.

With a door behind her entire demeanor changed; her body relaxed, and it was as if a giant weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. She quickly flipped the light switch next to her on, flooding the room in light. She really didn't have any use for the objects in the bathroom at the moment, but she enjoyed the feeling of freedom this room produced.

Demyx wasn't in the room with her.

She inhaled, a smile on her face, and wandered over to the window. While her captor had somehow made the window blinds fixed in place, she was still able to see the outside world through the cracks. The black night sky was there to greet her, and by angling her head in just the right spot underneath of it, she was able to catch a glimpse of some of the stars in the winter sky. Small flurries of snow floated down in the air, melting as soon as they made physical contact with anything. She savored the sight of it all. They were the only thing beyond her walls that she could see, and now she could rarely see. She stared up at the sky for a good few moments before she turned away from the window.

She wanted to stay in this room for as long as she could, and chances were the man waiting outside the room would be more than happy to take her out of it if she didn't make any sign that she was doing anything.

She walked over to the counter and turned on the sink. She reached into the drawer next to her, grabbed her toothbrush, and ran it under the water for a second before she began scrubbing away at her teeth, letting her stresses fade to the back of her mind for the moment. It was unfortunate that her toothpaste was missing, but water had worked for her ancestors.

She finished scrubbing as quickly as she could. She set the brush on the counter. The sound of it being placed was drowned out by the running water. She quietly bent to the ground, and laid on the rug.

A wave of relief rushed through her. She stretched out her unbelievably sore back, and lavished in the feeling of her stiff muscles loosening. It was incredible how good it felt to relax her body. Sitting in that chair all day was taking a serious physical toll on her, and the effects it had on her were starting to appear. Although she knew what was happening to her, she chose to ignore it; at least for now.

Right now, she was completely focused on how great it felt. Laying down right now felt better than it did on any other day so far. She was amazed by how good it felt to actually be in a different position then in the sitting position she was in almost day. It was just incredible.

Slowly, she lost herself in the soothing sensation. She didn't register the room becoming blurry, her body's relief having her full attention. As time went on she started to feel something else. She felt as if she knew this secondary feeling coming to her, but she didn't bother trying to recognize it. It was just so… entrancing. She didn't want to pay attention to anything but that entrancing feeling. She remained engrossed in the sensation; not even noticing the black starting to seep into her vision. Her eyelids started to flutter a bit, so she shut them. It felt like she shut them anyway.

Suddenly, there was a banging sound somewhere, but that didn't matter. For a short moment she felt like she was rising to her feet, but the entrancing feeling quickly regained her attention.

Within moments she was completely overtaken, and she had been lulled into what felt like sleep before she even realized what had really happened.


	6. To Sleep

There were sounds. Heather could hear them, but she couldn't decipher them. She could tell that they were sounds though.

The world around her seemed foggy. Everything remained in that unclear state for quite some time, but she didn't know that. Everything was foggy, and because of that she couldn't tell that time was passing as it normally did. She couldn't tell that she was even affected by time, not that she could remember that time existed. Everything was foggy, and that included her mind.

The fog was so strong that she couldn't tell that anything else existed besides the fog, and because of that, she couldn't tell what was happening to her. She couldn't tell that she existed, after all. That fog had overtaken every individual sense she had, and as a result, she couldn't use any of them. She couldn't smell what was happening to her, she couldn't touch what was happening to her, she couldn't taste what was happening to her, she couldn't hear what was happening to her, and she couldn't see what was happening to her. All of her senses were useless. She was so overtaken by the fog that she couldn't even think about what was happening to her. Even the most basic of bodily functions seemed to have vanished from her capabilities; not that she could tell that she had a body.

With how strong the fog was one could assume that it would continue on for even longer. That would have been the case, but something changed.

Suddenly, the whole world was crystal clear. Everything instantly came to her- her name, her face, her friends, her family, her life- her existence. She remembered everything, and all of her senses had returned. With her mind now intact, she started to feel what was happening to her.

She was falling.

It was odd. She could tell that she wasn't falling through air, but something else. How was that possible? She had to be falling in the air. It was impossible to fall though a solid. In the air, gravity would pull her down. If she were on something solid then gravity would just keep her on the solid. She wouldn't fall _through_ the solid. She was a solid herself, and because of that she would fall in the air. The only other thing she could be falling through would be liquid, and if she were sinking in liquid then she wouldn't be able to breathe, which she was. She just had to be falling through the air, but her rejuvenating senses told her that she wasn't.

Slowly, her senses became stronger. When her senses were somewhat strong, she thought as if whatever she was falling through abruptly changed into something else. She quickly shrugged this thought off. It was weird enough that she felt like she wasn't falling through the air, but the thought of whatever she was falling through changing form as she fell through it was just preposterous. She may not have been incredibly smart, but she was well smart enough to know what was just flat out impossible.

Her senses were starting to become stronger, faster. They were almost back to their regular state now. Her ability to respond to touch was strengthening quickly, and as she correctly identified what she was falling through she found herself even more perplexed than she was already.

She was falling through water.

How was she breathing? Timidly, she opened her mouth just enough, and as she inhaled she felt what was without a doubt air coming into her mouth. She could breathe both with her mouth and with her nose. How could that be? She was completely surrounded by water, floating down in it for the love of her mother, but she was breathing in air. She should be suffocating- she should be choking to death as water surged its way through every single hole and tube in her body. Her lungs should be full with it by now, and her heart had to have stopped pounding a long time ago. Even though the laws of nature seemed to claim everything opposite of what was happening right now, those defining laws changed nothing.

With her senses back to their proper condition she was capable of feeling everything around her, and that everything included the items on her person. Instead of questioning how she was even alive like she wanted to, she found herself plagued by more seemingly endless questions.

If she was falling through water, then how was she completely dry? Sure, she could feel the water brushing against her skin, but her skin felt like it was as dry as it would have had she been sitting on her couch in the middle of spring. Then there was her hair. It was floating around, drifting around in the ever-altering directions of the current, but it was completely dry. Her hair felt like it was being tousled by the wind more than anything else.

Besides the bizarre fact that she was completely dry as she fell though water there was the even more bizarre fact that she was_ falling_ through water. If she was in water shouldn't she be _sinking_? It only made sense. If she was in water then she should be descending at a slower rate than how fast she would be descending in the air, but she was falling through the water as if she was falling through the air. It made absolutely no sense.

Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense at all, but then again, nothing had been making sense in the first place. Maybe nothing was supposed to make sense. Nothing in her life really made sense.

Demyx didn't make sense.

She felt herself drifting down in the watery depths, but she had no idea as to where she was going. She didn't dare open her eyes. If whatever she was falling through wasn't water, and if whatever she was falling through wasn't really safe for her, then she would be in trouble. At the very least, she was going to protect her eyesight. Even though it may have seemed like it was more likely for her eyes to be completely unaffected by her surroundings when she herself was completely unaffected as a whole, she still felt the need to keep them closed.

Eventually, after what felt like a few moments had passed she started to feel something different. The entire time she had been falling through the air she felt like it had been at a steady pace, but now it felt like it was if she was slowing down. How that was possible she didn't know, but with all of the questions floating around in her mind she didn't have the energy to even try to answer it.

Whatever the answer was, it didn't seem to matter all that much. She found that she was indeed slowing down, and the water current that had her enveloped beforehand was losing its grip on her. In a pass of a few seconds, she felt her entire body flipping over in the water, and her feet were now touching something solid. Surprised, she tilted her head down, only to remember that she had her eyes shut. The reason for why she had them shut evaded her. Why wasn't she looking around?

Taking that question as an initiative, she opened her eyes, and found herself staring.

She was right about being surrounded by water; incredibly right. She looked around, amazed that she could see nothing but water. It was everywhere. She couldn't even see light coming from the water above her where the surface had to be, so she had to be really deep down. Even though there wasn't any light source the water was still illuminated somehow. The fact that she was seeing all of this water was astounding her, and at the same time baffling her. Even though she knew for sure that she was completely submerged in it, the water did nothing to hinder her vision. Her vision should be blurry right now, but it wasn't. Just like how she couldn't feel the water touching her skin, she couldn't feel the water making contact with her eyes.

Heather was amazed. Suddenly the questions as to where she was, how this was possible, when this all happened, and what had exactly happened in the first place were no longer plaguing her. This place was just incredible. She was incredibly dumbfounded by everything around her, but at the same time she was just as curious. This struck her as odd, seeing as how she had never really been the curious type, but she found that she just didn't care about her out of place reaction.

For some reason, this didn't feel bizarre at all now.

While the area around her was simply extraordinary, both her budding curiosity and natural concern made her look at what she was standing on. She was standing on what appeared to be a thick layer of sand.

The sight instantly reminded her of an ocean. There was miles worth of water above her head, and the sandy ground looked like it expanded on for forever. The only things that took away from her image of an ocean was the fact that the water was crystal clear, which was more notable since the water was somehow illuminated, and that the sand was completely devoid of anything besides sand. If this place were really like an ocean, then the water had to be a bit murky and there would have to be something littering the ground below her. An ocean was expansive, and hugely populated. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere.

Looking at the ground now, she noticed that she had her socks on. That fact alone wasn't noteworthy, but the fact that they were completely dry was. She shouldn't have been surprised, and she really wasn't. Nothing on her was wet, so she didn't expect her clothing to be. Besides, even with her eyes closed she could tell that her clothing was dry because she could feel it against her skin.

She shuffled her feet, hoping to see if the sand would be kicked into the air and if it were to fall back down. It made her feel a little odd that she wanted to do something as unusual as kicking the sand, but she didn't question it. Distracted with the task, she almost didn't notice the forgotten rational side of her mind that nagged at her to question what was happening around her and where Demyx was. It didn't make her listen to it though.

She didn't know anyone by the name of Demyx.

In fact, she didn't know anyone.

She shuffled her feet, actually moving the sand this time, but she didn't get what she had expected. What happened was actually far from anything she could've imagined.

The sand rose from the ground, but not because of her foot. The entire layer of sand she was standing on rose into the air, each tiny grain merging together into groups of not clumps of wet sand, but what looked to be shattering glass. She watched, her head following the shattered pieces as they rose in the water and disintegrated into nothing. A bright light below her startled her out of her short lasting stupor, and she looked down at the source.

As the light faded she made the ground out to be a blank platform of some sort, and she incredulously looked around to see that all of the water had vanished. The water that she had bizarrely become accustomed to was utterly gone from the area around her, not a single drop of liquid left. Instead of the strange illumination providing her with a way to see, a black sky-like atmosphere that was littered with what appeared to be stars did.

Another light beneath her made her look down again. Nothing so far had surprised her as much as what was below her did.

For when she looked down, she saw herself.

The platform beneath her took on the appearance of stained glass. All around the platform were a multitude of circles, and each one of them was made of a varied shade of purple. The stained glass was lit somehow, just like the water, but it was… dimmer. It wasn't nearly as bright as the water had been. The majority of her lighting actually came from the pitch black sky above her. The purples, all dull in color, shone weekly beneath her. Looking at the grey light that each circle pattern produced, she suddenly felt as if something was wrong.

Stooped by the odd feeling, she didn't notice as her body moved on its own accord, bringing her to the center of the platform.

Besides the circular patterns that she felt would have looked wonderful if they were painted more vivid shades of purple than the grayscale ones they were, there was an elaborate illustration of what couldn't have been anything but her.

It was just impossible.

The painting had every detail of her body correct. Her figure was thin, not really skinny, but thin. Seeing the mirror image of herself reminded her that her figure had been looking a little bit skinnier than what was considered healthy since she had started spending her time being tied to a chair. Nothing was muscular on the image just like how nothing was muscular on her own physique. As her muscles had weakened from her being tied to a chair from day to night, they weren't exactly pronounced. The image's skin was notably pale colored; her skin was pale itself from having absolutely no exposure to the sun for an extended period of time.

All of her facial features were correct, too. The outline of the image's narrow chin corresponded to her actual chin, and so was the outline of its jaw. The image's lips were thin and just as pale as hers. The nose of the image was a bit crooked, mirroring her own nose, and the image's nostrils were slim like her very own. The cheeks weren't too large, nor were they too small, just like hers. The image even had her eyes correct. The eyelashes were thin, running around the downturned shape of the eyes, and the dull brown color of the irises were identical to hers. The eyebrows were thin and their color matched the pale black color if the rest of the image's hair. The hair, as a matter of fact, was in the same long hairstyle that she had at the moment. The bangs hung above the eyebrows, and the hair at the back had a very slight wave to it. It wasn't a big enough wave to make the hair be considered curly, not in the least, but it was just enough to prevent it from being considered straight.

Unless Heather had a long lost identical twin sister who she had somehow never known about, the stained glass figure was her. It was just not possible for it to be anything else. Normally, she would have considered the very small chance that there was some stranger in the world somewhere that looked exactly like her to be more likely than someone actually making this image after her, but something told her that wasn't the case. To be precise, that something also gave her the ridiculous idea that this platform wasn't man-made.

Instantly, she was arguing with herself as to who the person on the glass could be. Her mind screamed that it was impossible for this to be her; that this was an entirely huge coincidence of some sort. It just screamed at her that it had to have been someone else, or that this image that looked like her was created without a specific person in mind.

It was just insane to think that this image was _her_.

Even though it was unlikely, she couldn't come up with anything else that was as remotely rational as that. Eventually, she would have come to the conclusion that she shouldn't bother thinking about this bizarre occurrence, but something prevented her from that. Something told her deep inside that this image was her, and that this image meant a lot more to her than just being a replica of her appearance. It came up with all of the evidence that her mind was preventing her from completely processing- the image had more than just incredibly similar features.

There was a small scar on the image on the right elbow, one of which she had on her very elbow from falling over a log as a small child. The image was wearing clothing that she had in her own closet. She hadn't worn that dress in a few years, but she hadn't grown all that much in her teen years. The fact that the dress only looked an inch or two too short on the image supported the theory that the dress was the one that she had worn.

It was insane, but it was more than just a coincidence.

Something told her that this was her. She felt as if she there was a reason for why she was specifically here, looking at the mirror image of herself, a reason that she was aware of, but she couldn't think of it. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't think of any sort of reason that would make her be her in the first place, and she was quickly becoming irritated. It was there, it felt like the reason was on the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn't think of it. It wasn't coming to her.

The only feeling that was coming to her was an emotion that disturbed her, but she felt as if it wasn't the reason as to why she was here. It was this foreboding feeling. She felt as if something bad was going to happen, no, it wasn't that. It felt like… something bad was happening. She didn't know what that bad thing was, but she felt as if this image in front of her had something to do with it.

In this blur of emotions, a turmoil of confusion and anxiety overwhelmed her, making her feel as if it wouldn't hesitate to swallow her up if she got caught up in it if only for a second. Questions didn't come to her mind, but she felt as if there was a war raging inside her body. One side said something, while the other said the opposite. The battle between those sides was so strong that her brain couldn't process any thoughts.

All that kept her aware of what was happening outside of her body and preventing her from succumbing under the pressure of this argument of reality happening beneath her skin was one little thing. This thing was one of the odd observations that she had made subconsciously, and focusing on it gave her an opening to avoid the chaos of confusion happening within her.

That little observation that she had made was somehow the thing that hit her the deepest out of everything here, and at the same time it was the thing that somehow rung like it had something to do with the truth with everything.

All that she was able to tell was that the weak light that the platform was emitting from its sickly colored glass surface felt very wrong.

**"You are not supposed to be here."**

She heard some sort of noise coming from her side, and all of the pandemonium running through her suddenly came to a screeching halt. Slowly, due to both her apprehension and the strain her body was under, she turned to view the source of the noise.

At the edge of the platform, a rectangle of multi-colored stained glass appeared out of thin air. Then, another one appeared; only a little bit higher than the first one. Another one followed after that one, and then another one. As if reacting to her gaze, the boards of stained glass began appearing at a faster pace, and soon an entire row of them was starting to take form. Her gaze moved up to follow the growth of the row. She instantly became startled at what she saw above her.

There was a gigantic, stained glass pillar across from the platform she was on. She stared at it, taking in just how large it was. She figured that the pillar had to be more than thirty feet higher up than the platform, so how was it that she didn't notice it until now?

Realizing that the stained glass sheets were still appearing, she turned back to where they were appearing. She turned her head just in time to see the last stained glass sheet take form in the air. She didn't get to look at the formation they made because at almost the exact moment she looked at them each individual stained glass sheet suddenly burst into a bright light. She instinctively turned her head away from the sheets, her eyes squinting under the strain caused by the lights.

The light faded in less than a second, startling her, and she looked back to the stained glass formation. The stained glass sheets were angled in a row, making the row curl as it went along. The sheet that was closest to the platform was only a few inches above it, and she found that the panels that followed were all only a few inches taller than the one that came before it. The row started at the platform she was on, and it looked like it ended at the top of that pillar. A bit dumbfounded, she found that the shape that all of the stained glass sheets made together reminded her of a staircase.

The light of the platform underneath of her flickered. She looked down to watch as the weak light streaming from the dully colored stained glass under her feet started to fade, only stopping when the light it produced couldn't look any weaker without fading away entirely. She could barely even see the light anymore, but it still kept the glass underneath of her somewhat lit.

To her side, the glass row started to glow lightly. She stared at the glass sheets, taking in the handful of bright colors that they were painted. The individual circle patterns on the glass were all colored differently, varying between a bright shade of red, a golden yellow, a soft shade of green, and a color akin to sky blue. In a moment, she realized that she was standing before the row. She blinked; surprised that she had walked over to it without knowing it.

She felt as if she should be climbing these sheets. Just as she processed this thought, she felt like her heart stopped for a moment. Climb the _glass_? She couldn't do that. The glass would break underneath of her feet, and if she fell, if she fell… She timidly looked over the edge, and shuddered at the thought of falling down the seemingly never ending abyss.

Still, the feeling within her started to grow, and soon she was arguing with herself as to what she should do. Her mind kept telling her not to do it. It told her that doing that was beyond stupid, and that if she did that something that foolish then she would be in a lot of trouble. Something else argued with her mind though. She didn't know what it was, but she recognized it as the thing that fought with her mind from when she found the image of herself. Her mind, as if trying to fight off that other thing, continued to provide her with reasons as to why she shouldn't follow that feeling she had, and each argument of the pain she would experience if she followed the feeling seemed to manage to be more convincing than the one before it.

Her mind gave her every reason as to why not to follow the spontaneous idea. Each reason was very convincing; very convincing. Still, no matter how scared she was feeling her body seemed to be moving on its own accord. She started to walk up the stained glass, using the individual sheets as if they were really steps on a staircase, and soon the platform she was on previously was behind her.

She stopped her trek, and nervously looked down. She gulped at the sight of the pit beneath her. For some reason, the sky down there was a darker shade of black then the one above her. She didn't want to know why that was.

Biting her bottom lip, she continued on, only capable of doing so by imagining that she was really walking up an ordinary staircase instead of a group of thin, fragile, glass sheets. Slowly, she made progress up the stained glass stairs, and to her relief she was getting closer to the pillar. It appeared to have a flat surface at the top, and that was where the sheets of glass ended. Soon she was on the last sheets, and in a moment she was on the top of the pillar.

Cautiously, she put a foot on the pillar's surface. Finding the surface sturdy, she took a deep breath, and stepped onto the pillar. As soon as she did she found that the lights died down, and she turned around, gasping as she did. All of the stained glass sheets were gone. They were completely gone. The only thing that she could see was the faraway image of the stained glass platform she was on before. Now that she was able to see it, she saw that the platform she was on before was really a pillar, a pillar just like the one she was on now.

She looked down at her feet, fully expecting to see some other stained glass image, but the surface below her was pure black. Blank.

She stood there for a few moments. Soon, her fear of falling over the edge got the better of her, and she timidly walked to the center of the pillar's surface. Seeing that nothing bad happened, she looked around herself a few times, and sat down.

Nothing else happened. There weren't any sudden bursts of light, nor were there anymore mysteriously appearing sheets of glass. Nothing happened. Everything was quiet.

In the silence, all of those questions she had earlier were coming back. How did she get here? Where was she? Why did this happen? When did she get here? What was this place? All of these questions came to her, but she didn't have an answer to any of them. What were these pillars? She didn't know. How did she walk on the stained glass sheets? She didn't know. How long was she here? She still didn't know. Where was this place? Why wasn't she at home? Where was her home? She was at home before wasn't she? Her memory was sort of foggy, but she felt as if there was something she should remember.

She was at home before she wound up here, right? Well, what was she doing when she was at home? Thinking about it, she remembered that she was staying at home while her parents were on a vacation. What was she doing while she was at home? She was all alone, so she had to have been doing something to keep her occupied. She graduated high school a few months ago, so she wasn't attending classes.

Her head started to pound, and she pressed her hands against it in an attempt to lessen the pain.

She was at home in the morning… it was her first day alone. Everything was normal. She was getting something to eat and then… and then… That was all that she could remember. Something happened after that. She felt like that day was a while ago. It wasn't that day, so what was it…?

As she tried to remember what happened after that the pain afflicting her head grew, and she feebly clutched her head tighter.

Something happened. Something had to have happened; she knew that something happened. All that she could think of was the color black. That was it. The color black had something to do with what happened. She focused on the color black, and the more she thought about it, the more she felt like she was on to something. Something black, something black… rustling… the color black had something to do with rustling. Something black was rustling. What could rustle? Was it something to do with bushes? No, she didn't think so. Were leaves blowing in the wind? There weren't any leaves on the trees at this time of year. Well, was clothing brushing together?

Clothing.

It hit her. Black clothing. It was black clothing. Black clothing had something to do with what happened, but what type of clothing? A shirt? Maybe some pants? No, those weren't it. Was it a jacket? What was that clothing? It… it was something someone wore that covered them very well. It was long sleeved. Whatever it was it was long sleeved. If it wasn't a jacket, nor was it pants, then it had to be something that covered a body even more. The only thing that she could think of that covered more than a jacket was a cloak, and she didn't know what a cloak would have to do with anything.

A black cloak. It was a black cloak. It was deep black, and it was tight to wear. It covered every part of the body, only leaving the feet and hands visible when it was completely zipped up. A black cloak had something to do with what happened. She didn't own a cloak, so what purpose did it serve in her memories? If a cloak was involved, someone was probably wearing it. Someone was wearing it. That was right- she was starting to remember what it was. She wasn't wearing the cloak; the person wearing the cloak had to be a man. She didn't know why, but she couldn't think of anyone else wearing it. She wasn't a man, so how was a cloak in her memories-

Realization struck her, and her memories returned. She wasn't wearing the cloak.

Demyx was.

She froze at the realization, and her head shot up in shock. That was right- it was Demyx. Demyx was wearing the cloak. Demyx was with her that day. Demyx was-

As her head shot up she got a glimpse of something dark. Her thoughts blew away like nothing was ever there, and she looked in front of her. There was this odd, dark mound-like shape in front of her. It was pitch black, and matched the color of the floor she was sitting on. It looked to be attached to the ground. She blinked at it, and she started to wonder what it was exactly when it did something that startled from her thoughts.

It moved.

In front of her, the mound turned, and it moved until it was a few inches away from her. Suddenly, two pure yellow circles appeared on the top part of the mound, and it toke her a moment to realize that they were eyes. She didn't have any more time to think because the mound suddenly removed itself from the floor and leapt at her.

All she saw was a pure black claw in front of her face, and then the world turned black.


	7. To Wake Up

Heather bolted awake. She didn't open her eyes, nor did she even twitch, but that was because of this out of place pounding that she felt in her head. After realizing that she was awake she quickly realized that she had a headache, and at that, a very painful one.

A deep, groggy feeling had overtaken her, and she wasn't able to tell anything else besides that. She didn't take this as odd because this was what she normally felt like whenever she woke up in the morning. She was one of those people that had trouble getting up in the morning. Sure, she had mornings where she could get up without much effort, but that was always an odd day. She had been sleeping more since she had been tied up in the chair, and getting too much sleep made a person as tired as someone that hadn't gotten enough. Knowing that, she took this as her normal wake up routine, for all she could tell was that she wanted to go back to sleep. This was normal for her.

However, even she had the feeling that she had to have been asleep for several hours, she felt like she didn't sleep a wink. Not even for a couple of minutes.

That was not normal.

Being half-asleep, she didn't pay much attention to it. She noticed that she was in a slightly uncomfortable position, but she was too tired to do anything about it. All that mattered was that she was tired, and that she should be sleeping. She tried to push aside the feeling of consciousness that she was developing, and tried to fall back asleep. It probably took a while for her to snap out of her daze, but when she finally looked around.

She wasn't sitting on the chair. Her mind came to a blank as she tried to figure out how that was possible. Slowly, she recalled that she had been in the bathroom when she fell asleep, and not in the dining room. She frowned, her fatigue crumbling away as she started to come back to reality.

While she now understood why she wasn't in the chair, she didn't understand why she was laying in the bathtub of all places.

She had fallen asleep on the floor. She remembered it clearly. She had fallen asleep on the floor, not in the bathtub. How could she have wound up inside the bathtub? She couldn't have just lifted herself into it during her sleep. She knew that there had to have been a reason, and she wanted to know it. The more she thought about it however, the more she realized that how she had gotten in there was less important than what would happen now that she was awake.

She knew that doing things on her own was a bad idea, and she'd have to face the consequences for this. If she was tired she should've just left the room, let Demyx tie her up, and fall asleep on the chair. He was going to be mad when he found her. Doing this was bad, and being bad had consequences. Who knew what he was going to do to her now, whenever he found her here...

With that thought, she realized that Demyx had to have already found her in the bathroom. It wasn't possible for him to have not found her. Then why hadn't he punished her yet? She felt like he would've done that. Why did he let her sleep? He had to have let her sleep. He must've found her, and moved her into the bathtub for whatever reason he had. Why did he move her? He was the only one that could've moved her. He had to have had a reason for doing so; he _always _had a reason for doing anything.

Besides feeling a bit disoriented, she found that she was completely fine. She wasn't injured, she wasn't nauseous, and she wasn't even in an uncomfortable position anymore. Apparently, she had rolled into that rough position she was in earlier on her own. That was the only thing she was thankful for at the moment, but that thankfulness wasn't significant to her. The lack of pain didn't tell her why she wasn't on the floor like she was before and why he hadn't done anything to her.

It only brought her more questions. It didn't make sense. She couldn't think of any reason as to why he would have put her in the bathtub to sleep instead of dragging her back to the chair.

She laid there, trying to come up with some sort of answer to her questions, but accomplished nothing. The light on the ceiling was still turned on, but she could still see the hints of sunlight coming in through the window. It was morning now, at least. She had fallen asleep during the night. Why had Demyx left her in here instead of waking her up? Why did he move her to the _bathtub_ of all places? Why did he even move her at all? She probably wasn't even asleep for very long when he came into the room; even more of a reason for him to wake her up. What reason could he have to put her here? What reason could he have for leaving her alone?

She wanted an answer for her questions.

After a moment of resting her throbbing head, Heather willed herself to get out of her resting place, and her bare feet made contact with the floor. Wasn't she wearing socks when she fell asleep? She quickly filed away that question as one to find an answer for later, and she pushed aside the oddly closed shower curtains. Why it was closed was another question she thought of.

She gaped at what she saw.

The room was a mess. All of the hygiene products were strewn across the room, some of the plastic containers laying on the floor while some of the glass items were scattered in pieces. What looked like a combination of the supposedly missing toothpaste, water, and mouthwash now stained the window-side wall. The source seemed to be a broken bottle of mouthwash on the floor by the wall, and the shredded toothpaste container laying next to it. The mirror above the sink was broken in half, with the upper half laying in pieces on the sink while the bottom half was relatively alright. The only thing she noticed to be out of place on the bottom half was what appeared to be her toothbrush sticking out of the bottom left corner, the bristle side drooping out of the hole it was in. The cabinets on the wall next to the sink were flung wide open; one was even hanging on its hinges. The rug she remembered resting on before was scrunched up on the other side of the room, as if someone had pushed it up by accidentally putting too much pressure on the edge of it.

She silently took in the appearance of the room, the room she knew to be clean and organized the last recent time she had seen it.

She took in a deep breath, and decided to look at the ground beneath her before setting her feet anywhere. She had been lucky she hadn't stepped on any of that broken glass.

Carefully, she moved past the ruined floor and stood in front of the door. She pulled on the doorknob, and the door in front of her responded by opening with its usual creak. She didn't open it all the way.

Was this a good idea? She had no idea what was on the other side of this door, and judging by the looks of the room she was in now, the state of the rest of the house wouldn't be much better. With a gulp, she pushed her hesitation to the side, and walked out of the bathroom.

When she took her first step into the hallway, she immediately wished she hadn't.

It was worse than the bathroom.

Now that she didn't have anything to restrict her line of vision she was able to see deeper down the hall, and she was able to see the deep red that painted it. It was scattered across the floor, splattered as if someone had been wildly whipping a large paintbrush around. In certain areas it managed splattered on the bottoms of the walls, and there were even a few speckles of it in the middle of one wall.

She barely caught herself when she stumbled at the sight. She reached at the doorframe for support, only to recoil when she saw the blood resting on it.

This was horrifying.

This was her house, her home, the place she had been raised all of her life. It had never been damaged; it survived a tornado without a scratch. Never in all of these years had it been soiled like this. _Never_.

This was the place her parents started their married lives together, after scraping up enough money from both of their jobs in order to do it. This was the place her parents took her to after being born. This was the place where she had learned how to talk. This was the place where she had learned how to walk. This was the place where she lost her first tooth. This was the place where she did her first homework assignment in. This was the place where she had her first happy memory in. This was the place where almost all of the most important moments of her life occurred in. This was the place she had lived her life in. This was the only place in the world that she had actually felt truly safe in.

How could this have happened? She had never thought that this could happen in this place. This was more than just a place; this place was her home.

This place wasn't supposed to be ruined.

This place wasn't supposed to be her prison.

This place wasn't supposed to be a place of her nightmares.

Tears raced down her cheeks, falling without any hindrance. Even though it didn't seem possible to her, even more tears freely leaked out of her eyes as she started to hiccup. Sobs tore out of her mouth and before she knew it all she could do was cry. She fell pathetically down to the ground, her body not even protesting in pain. Her vision fogged over as she stared at the red stains marring the formerly brown wood, and in a few moments enough tears were gathered in her eyes for her to see through them. The floor was supposed to be brown. It wasn't supposed to be anything other than that. Her sobs grew even louder, the image of her horribly stained home now forever engrained into her memory.

This was_ awful_.

Slowly, she started to run out of tears. At some point, tears stopped going down her face, but she continued to sob nonetheless. Her tears may have run dry, but her emotions didn't. The sadness, the horror, and the disgust didn't die off as cruel acceptance overtook her; they just grew stronger. The pure shock of seeing the unfathomable sight in front of her began to fade away, but with the shock gone she could feel her emotions even better now, as the shock had functioned as her only distraction.

This couldn't have happened. This never could have happened.

She looked around herself, swiftly remembering her never ending questions. She had to figure out what had happened here, and she had to know where this blood came from. Her building negative emotions had a strong hold of her senses at the moment, but she wasn't senseless enough to believe that the blood had come out of thin air. It had to have come from somewhere.

She had to know what happened. She had to know what happened, and how this could have ever happened. She had to know what Demyx had to do with it. He had something to do with it. He was the only one that could've had something to do with it; he was the only one besides her that was even here.

There was just one big question that she wanted to answer now.

Where was he?

Not bothering to scrub the drying tears off of her face, she rose to her full height. Out of sheer habit, she bit her bottom lip, and started to walk down the dirty hallway. She couldn't help but hiccup as she got a closer look at the blood on the beige walls. She looked back down at the ground, and tried to focus on getting down the hall instead. She was careful to avoid any of the blood scattered around, not wanting to get any of it on her bare feet, but as she avoided the red spots she felt something that had gone unnoticed make contact with her feet. She immediately stopped in place, and looked closely at her feet.

The floor was wet.

It was completely unexpected, but it was true. The floor was completely drenched in water. That couldn't be possible.

There wasn't any water running; at all. She was laying in the bathtub before, so it couldn't have come from there. The bathroom sink wasn't able to produce this much water, and the same could be said about the kitchen sink. The only place it could have come from was the bathtub, and she definitely would have noticed if she was soaked to the bone.

Where did all of this water come from?

With even more questions appearing in her mind, she warily continued on her trek. She soon realized that there was a trail of water, almost as if someone that was completely drenched had walked through, but it looked more like a whole group of drenched people had walked in a single-file line. She noticed that mingled in with the water was something red, having its very own trail in the water.

Her mind came to a screeching halt as she realized that it could very well be the result of someone bleeding as they walked around.

Where was Demyx?

A few feet down, the trail became slimmer in width. She didn't know if that was a good thing or not. The hallway wasn't all that large, so she could see that the trail of water went into her parents' room. She swallowed her building saliva, and blinked when she realized her mouth was actually dry. She set this thought aside as she cautiously walked towards the door, stopping short when she saw the blood smeared on the knob. She winced at the sight, and uncomfortably looked away.

She realized a moment later that she was getting distracted from her purpose, and turned back to the door. Bracing herself, she carefully avoided all of the blood on the thankfully large knob, and walked into the room before her doubts could keep her from doing so.

Just like everything else, the room was a mess as well. The bed covers were strewed about the room, torn in some places, just like the curtains were, and the rug on the floor was in tatters. She walked in further to notice that there was a head-sized hole in the wall next to her. At that, the pictures on the wall next to it were laying on the ground, broken. Feathers were scattered around on the floor; the pillow they had come from was also on the floor, ripped in half. The desk chair was laying in the center of the room, a leg torn off, and the desk's corner was chipped.

The room, while disheveled, wasn't as bad as the hallway.

She turned in place, having no intention of pointlessly gawking at the mess. Almost instantly afterwards, her eyes landed on the appearance of the closet door. It had a large gash running down it. It ran down from the very tip of the upper right corner all the way down to the edges of the bottom left corner. Smaller gashes, all in various directions, also left marks on the door. Water was splattered all over it. Water simply coated the door, and the walls were notably darker than they normally were. What really caught her attention was that a small puddle of blood was gathered underneath of the doorknob, and that puddle was connected to the trail she had been falling.

She stood there for a moment. In the next, she took a baby step forward. Without an extra thought coming to her mind after that, she grabbed the door handle, and turned it open.

She found Demyx.

Demyx laid on the closet floor, using the low shelf behind him to prop his body into a half-sitting, half-leaning position. His cloak had slashes in it just about everywhere, as if someone had been whipping him with all of their might. The inflamed skin was visible through all of the holes that littered his clothing, and the long gashes that raked across his skin corresponded with each tear in the cloth.

A thin layer of what had to be his blood was sprinkled on the floor, and a torn piece of his cloak accompanied it. He was panting heavily, and his voice was occasionally audible in some of his continuous puffs.

Heather gasped, and he made a peculiar gasping noise of his own, as if he was just now noticing her. He raised his head ever so slightly, but he quickly lowered it back down as he groaned in pain. She gasped again and, without really realizing it, shuffled over to him. She knelt beside him, and tentatively reached her hands outwards towards him, as if the action alone would do something.

They stayed like that for a few minutes. He struggled with his injuries, lurching in pain every once in a while, and she simply remained positioned next to him, completely clueless.

"Are… Are you okay?" She finally asked, still stunned by the condition of the man in front of her. Her voice came out in a whisper, her eyes never leaving the spot where his face had to be. It was completely obvious that he wasn't okay, but she still asked him if he was nonetheless.

She didn't know what else she should do.

She stared as he started to push himself up in response to her words, only responding herself by raising her hands up along with him. He managed to straighten himself up, only to hiss in pain a second later and lower himself back into his crouched position. She made a nervous noise in the back of her throat and continued to follow his movements with her hands. Completely transfixed by the man in front of her, she watched as he reached over with his right hand and clutched his left shoulder, hissing all the while.

Silence reigned over them once again. The only sound that emerged was his occasional grunt, or the little worried gasp that would escape her lips immediately after he would do so.

She didn't know what to do.

There, sitting right in front of her, was a quite possibly seriously injured man.

She didn't know what to do. She had never been around an injured person before. She hadn't been very exposed to blood, and the most blood she had ever seen was from a bad scrape on her father's kneecap. She didn't know any sort of first aid, let alone know where the first aid kit in the house was. Plus, she had no experience in dealing with cuts bigger than what one would receive from the edge of a piece of paper.

She was helpless.

The silence continued on for a while. She didn't know how much time had passed, probably a few minutes, but she wasn't thinking about that at the moment. She was completely mesmerized by the sight before her. She felt that she should do something, anything to help him despite what he had done to her. He didn't do much to her after all; nothing like this. She wanted to help, help with anything, but she had no idea as to what she should do. Should she try to treat his wounds? Should she try to help him get to his feet? Maybe she should even try to clean up the area around him? Would that do anything? She needed to know what she should do. She could do a lot of things, maybe not all that well, but she could still do something.

Her brain provided her with no answer to her questions, and with that, she had no real idea as to what to do.

"Ahh… gah…!" It sounded like he spat the sound out, and he continued on, panting as he struggled to speak. "Y-you…"

She worriedly watched as he struggled to turn to her, only managing to tilt his head towards her instead of his entire body. His panting became more recurrent as he performed the action, but he didn't stop moving.

"Why?" He asked, his voice cracking. The tone of his voice was somewhere lost in between the deep voice that she had become accustomed to and the boyish pitch he had spoken with when they had first met.

She didn't know how to feel about the sudden change.

He suddenly gasped, and she reacted on pure reflex. Without really grasping what was happening, she found the distance between them closed. She started rubbing small circles on his shoulders, hoping that she was doing something for the man, and kept a closer eye on his shadowed face.

He made this gurgling noise, something that sounded almost like a very wet cough, and he managed to turn his head directly in her direction, making them face to face. Almost instantly afterwards he let out a painful grunted again. That action made her reach her free hand in front of him in concern, but he didn't do anything about it, and he started to speak.

"Why?" He asked her again. His voice was weak, making his question come out in a rough whisper. "Why are you here?"

Instead of giving her an actual answer she just stared at him, her mouth dry.

"Why are you here? I-I know you must be pretty stunned by what you're seeing, but you should've gotten over it by now... This was your chance. You could've run for it, and I wouldn't have ever been able to catch you. You would've been free. Isn't that what you want?" He asked her, but his question felt rhetorical. His voice was still weak as it was a moment ago, but now his voice just somehow seemed to have this sort of… dead tone mixed in with it. That was all she could describe it as; dead. It was vacant. It was hollow.

It was empty.

"…um…"

She started to speak, but she abruptly stopped herself. Any words that had immediately come to her mind to answer his question left her mind just as quickly. A response came to mind for a second, but then it went away. She didn't know how to answer him. She didn't think of leaving the house. She didn't consider it a possible option until he mentioned it.

"…so you don't know. I get it." He said; his voice just as muted as it had been before.

She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off before she could say anything.

"You just stayed here for some reason that you don't really understand; you never really understand _anything_ until it's said out loud. I know what it is though. This is_ your_ place after all. You're just waiting for me to drop, so you can have it back to yourself." He said. His words felt cruel, but his voice held no disdain. In fact, his voice was still in that eerily vacant tone. "It must've been pretty freaky to wake up and see that your house was banged up the way it is. The blood must've spooked you, huh...? You're pretty skittish on your own, but this is probably making you really freaked out. It's not something you'd see every day..."

He stayed silent for a moment, trailing off. She mulled over the words. Those words were the only things that she had heard spoken by another person in what felt like weeks. Maybe it had been weeks since she had heard him speak to her. She didn't know.

"Well, you're finally getting rid of me now. You're happy now, right? You get your place back. You get to be free again. Now…" He paused to chuckle. "Now you can actually sleep in your own bed. You won't have to be tied to your dining room chair all day long. That must be pretty exciting. I wouldn't know. I don't blame you for feeling this way; maybe I would have felt similar in your shoes... You can get your house all to yourself again. Now, everything will be back to normal for you."

"That's not true." The words left her mouth before she could tell she had actually thought them.

Demyx looked up, most likely confused, and she was just as confused.

"What do you mean by that?" He asked vacantly, looking over at her.

"…I… um…" She started weakly, feeling cornered by his question. "It's not because I thought I had the house to myself. I… I didn't think of it. I just didn't think of leaving the house."

"…I see." He said a moment later, his voice vacant. For some reason she pictured that he would've been more amused by what she said. "Anyway, that doesn't matter. You're done with me. I can't do anything, so I'm done."

"You're done?" She asked.

"I'm done. Just look at me. I'm a mess. I can't get up at the moment, so I can't treat my injuries. You're not gonna' help me. It would flat out completely work against you; not that you_ could_ help me in the first place. Most of my injuries are serious, and seeing as how you haven't noticed, I happen to have a hole in my gut." He said simply.

Heather looked at his abdomen, and gasped when she did indeed see a notable hole in his cloak there. At first, she had overlooked it as another tear, but now that she was looking at it from this angle she was able to see it. She felt herself pale, and she had to swallow as she felt bile rise in her throat.

"You get it now. I'm dying." He said, his voice croaking at the end of his sentence, but not due to any emotion. She looked at him, the pure stun his words caused overcoming anything else.

Silence lapsed over them again.

He was the one to break it; she was too stunned to do anything but remain stunned. His raspy voice was the only thing that kept the silence at bay.

"You know, at first… I thought you were an idiot." He said bluntly, his voice still vacant. "My first impression was that you were a bit of bimbo. You don't really look like one, but… you don't really have good luck…. Anyway, after I spent some time around you, I figured out that you weren't dumb, but that you just get overwhelmed pretty easy. Like, really easy. You get scared just as easily, too. A lot of people would be freaked out by your situation, I understood that, but at some point I realized that you were taking it slightly differently than how I thought an average person would. I figured that since you get overwhelmed by things so easily it takes you a while to actually understand what happens around you. When you finally understand what happened, you freeze. Your body reacts before your mind does, and then after you get it yourself you just go with whatever is happening… that probably helps you in the long run, since you get so freaked out by everything."

He stopped to start coughing. She looked at him with that ever present concern, but did nothing until he stopped on his own. With a shaky hand, he wiped at his mouth, and he looked at his glove before he lowered his hand.

"I don't know why you're so easy to spook, but you are. I have to say, while it does make me an ass for saying it, that because of that it actually made this a bit easier for you to handle. You really reacted to things without becoming upset, and that's because you didn't have the psychological stress to deal with. Yeah, I noticed. Whenever you reached a certain point, you would just black out. You never really remembered that you did when you came to. Maybe you didn't realize that this happened to you. With the way you handle these types of situations, I wouldn't be surprised if you block out this entire thing… That's good for you, I guess. You won't ever have to deal with me again; in person, or as a thought. You'll go on with your life… you have a long life ahead of you. You're pretty young. Uh, younger than me, I think." He said.

He took another break from speaking, and he tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. She watched his every movement. In the faint light provided from the bedroom, she was able to make the incredibly indistinct outline of his chin, but she was still able to make out a little bit of it. It didn't look too pronounced.

"Hey." He said suddenly. "How old are you?"

Nibbling on her bottom lip, she meekly replied "Eighteen."

"Eighteen." He repeated, his voice wavering. "Huh. That's not all that younger than me, I guess, but I was expecting something a bit older… It kinda makes sense though, now that I think about it. It sort of explains why you're acting the way you are… nah. That's just you, not the age..."

He trailed off again. He turned his head down, and stared at the ground. His hood obscured any shadowy detail of his face that she was able to see. He was silent for a longer amount of time than when he had first paused, and she thought that he was done speaking. After a few more moments he looked up at the ceiling again, only this time he extended his neck as far back as he could.

"You know, I didn't want to really do this… I know, it probably makes you hate me even more for saying it, but it's true… I just had to… I had to keep you here, if only for a little while. Before I knew it a little while just became a long while. I didn't want you blabbing about me being around… that would've caused me some trouble I didn't need to deal with… Yeah, not the best thing in the world to say, but that's how I… felt…" He stopped. He looked like he had more to say, but for some reason, she felt as if he was debating something.

"It's… it's how I thought." He paused again, but this time it seemed like he was pausing as if he was confirming something instead of pausing to rest. "It's really how I thought. I did what I did to you because I thought that I needed to. It wasn't because I felt _pleased _to do it; believe me. I don't feel pleasure about any of this, at all. I don't feel much about this, actually…"

He paused once more, this time to take in a deep breath. She felt concerned about how rickety the sound his throat created was, but she found herself unable to do anything about it. She was also starting to get worried about the fact that the amount of time he took to rest was steadily increasing, and that his voice was becoming worse with each sentence he spoke. She had a distinct feeling for some reason that he wasn't pausing mid-sentence just because of the emotion behind his words.

"Really, in all honesty, I can't feel much of anything, but I do feel a need to give my ending a bit of purpose... That's what I should feel, right? Wouldn't I feel like preventing my life from being a complete waste in my last moments? That would be a bummer…" His voice was quickly becoming rougher, and it was obvious to them both that it was starting to become a struggle for him to continue speaking.

He started coughing again. Her hands hovered over his fluctuating chest, and he seemed to stop mid-way in his cough to look at them. He only looked at them for small moment before he continued coughing, but after he finished he continued to look at them as he continued.

"…I don't want you to have the wrong idea about me. It's selfish, I guess, but… I really don't want you to think badly of me, even though you have every right to… I'll say it… I'm not some creep that came into your life with the pure purpose of ruining it... I… I screwed with your life, and I can't do anything to change that now… All I can do is tell you to move on from this thing; if you actually remember this thing… Maybe it's best that you forget; it probably is best that you forget, but right now… right now though, you can remember it, so I want you to remember what I'm saying. It may be selfish of me to say something like that, but hey, I guess I'm selfish… I'm definitely not selfless… I messed with you, and here I am, trying to justify everything I did… maybe I am a creep."

He paused again. This time, it was just for the words to sink in. She felt that the words weren't just sinking into her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am a creep… a total creep. I shouldn't even exist… in the first place…" He started. "…the fact that I'm technically alive is wrong… in more ways than one, so yeah, I am a total creep… my existence itself is creepy… you… you don't have to forgive me if you don't want to…you probably don't want to anyway… Since anything about me doesn't matter now… I'm… well… just be okay… okay?"

He stopped speaking. He was still staring at that ceiling for whatever reason, but he had turned his neck during his speech so that at least his chin was facing her.

He was acknowledging her.

Without another moment of staying in the ever growing silence, she slowly withdrew her hands from him. Just as slowly, she rose to her feet, and then she tore out of the room. She ran as quickly as she could, trying to ignore the gurgling sound that he made behind her that was clearly not made out of surprise.


	8. To See

This was the first time in what felt like a long time that Heather was alone. Sure, she was technically alone the majority of the time that she had been tied to that chair, but she wasn't allowed to do as she pleased. This was the first time that she was really on her own; able to make her own decisions. She could walk when she wanted to walk, she could move whenever she wanted to move, and she was able to look around at anything she pleased. She wasn't tied down, let up only at certain times, or blindfolded.

Ever since that one day she had decided on impulse to grab that gun, everything had been decided for her. She hadn't been in control of anything she was doing. She was able to do a lot of things on her own in the time period when she was brought into the bathroom, namely walked around on her own, but that was because Demyx let her, not because she was actually in control of what she was doing. The only thing she had really been controlling was her own breathing, and she had the feeling that if he had a problem with that then he would have changed that, too.

She felt... free.

This freedom was remarkable. Now that she was really free to do as she pleased, it was just incredible. It felt like it had been a long, long time since she was able to do any of this. Walking around on her own, deciding when she would do a specific thing, and being able to see her surroundings.

How long had it been since that day she had first met Demyx? She had no idea how much time had passed. She didn't recall the calendar date that she had met him on, and she hadn't been able to keep track of the days that had passed since then in the first place. It could've been a long time, but then again it might not have. She didn't know.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. She felt very energetic; almost like a ton of adrenaline was pumping throughout her body, but she didn't feel any of the effects one would get in conjunction with an adrenaline rush. It didn't feel as good either.

She was antsy.

She quickly shook this feeling away and tried to focus on something else. She had to wait here, and she needed something to pass the time. She looked around herself, and saw a stack of magazines on the table next to the chair she was sitting on. Rotating herself, she skimmed through the pile and found that there was a knitting magazine in the stack. She removed the magazine from the other ones, being careful in doing so in order to keep the other magazines from falling over, and set it on her lap.

It had been awhile since she had seen any sort of literature, or any kind of words in general.

After looking at the cover for a moment, she picked the magazine up. She opened up the flimsy book to its first page, and she tried to distract herself with the words inside. When a few moments had passed it was evident to her that she couldn't concentrate. Even with this calm, quiet atmosphere she couldn't get herself to focus on reading. Sure, she was interested in the articles she was trying to read, but she was too worried to pay any real attention to the paragraphs in front of her. Questions rolled in her head, distracting her from the reading material. Questions always seemed to be distracting her.

She looked up from the knitting magazine, tilting her head towards the wall across from her. She closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, and exhaled; instead focusing on the bland pattern of the wallpaper.

"Hello there."

Heather looked to her left to see an elderly woman in long clothing with a bonnet on her head standing near her side, a large purse on her shoulders that looked like it was hastily slung to her side, smiling as the hand she had grasping her purse strap notably shook.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" She asked, motioning towards the chair across from her before she raised her other hand to point at the doorway next to her, this hand of hers also shaking. "It's awfully close to the washrooms, and I do believe it's awfully close to that little snack shop over there as well."

She followed the shaking finger's direction to the aforementioned things that the woman was pointing at, and looked back to the woman. She nodded her head instead of giving the elder woman a verbal reply. Her gaze drifted downwards uncomfortably as she watched the woman slowly sit herself down into the chair across from her, placing her purse onto the chair next to her. After struggling for a moment, the older woman managed to turn herself enough to partially face her purse, and she began to rummage through it.

Biting her bottom lip, she looked back down to her magazine, and opened it once again. Whenever she thought that the woman across from her was too distracted to notice, she would shift in her seat uncomfortably, and would stop as soon as she thought that the woman would have been able to see her.

After a good few moments of doing this, the elderly woman completely unaware and Heather becoming increasingly more uncomfortable, she finally stopped herself from squirming any longer. It was silly to be bothered by someone just being near her.

She used to be a little bit uncomfortable being near strangers as a child, but she had gotten over that quickly. Even so, she had always remained at least a little fearful towards others, but for her, that was a given. She was more scared of what people could do more than the people themselves. Everyone minded their own business, and went on with only their business. That's how it went. They would get involved with strangers if their business required it, but if it didn't, they would usually leave the other person alone. This was exactly what the old woman was doing; minding her own business.

She focused on her magazine again, and this time she actually started to read what was in front of her, not wanting to find herself gawking at the presence of another person just because they were actually in the same room as her.

Time passed. She finished reading the knitting magazine she had found, read through another knitting magazine she had found by some good luck, and started to read the pamphlets when she didn't find any more reading material to her tastes. At some point the elderly woman had left, but she really didn't pay much attention to it. She needed distractions. She really needed something to distract her from her worries, and now her options were starting to become slim. She read the title of the next pamphlet she picked up, paled at what she had just read, and quickly put it back in its proper place.

These kinds of places scared her.

Bad things could happen, bad things probably, no not probably, bad things did happen in them and everyone seemed to continue on as if nothing had ever happened. These places reminded her that there was a reason to worry about things.

With that thought in mind she couldn't stop herself from worrying, and now she didn't have anything to distract her from her worries.

What had happened to Demyx? Why was he so… beaten up? She couldn't bring herself to describe the horrible condition he was in as anything more than that, and the mere memory of what he looked like when he saw him last made her shudder.

How did he end up like that anyway? He had to have been inside the house when it happened; with the rooms damaged the way they were they couldn't be described as anything but destroyed, and they had to have gotten like that somehow. A thought struck her. What if he wasn't in the rooms when they were wrecked? She quickly shrugged the thought off. That couldn't be possible. He was the only one besides her that had been in the house, and the small handful of people that could have somehow gained entrance to the house were all miles away from it. She very well doubted that a mouse had destroyed her house. Even if that wasn't the case, how was any of it even possible?

She was starting to hate questions.

She had never had a problem with them before, but now they were causing her all sorts of problems. Well, the questions weren't really her problem, per se, but they all led her to even more problems. Once she thought of one, then she would continue to think of it. Did her life really become her focusing on nothing but trying to think of an answer to all of these questions?

She just had to get answers for them. Now that she was thinking about it, she had never really gotten any sort of answer to any of her questions. Even the questions she had way back in the beginning were still unanswered.

She didn't know what had happened inside of her house. She didn't know what had happened that had left Demyx in that horrible state. She didn't know why her very own house was in shambles, and she didn't have a clue as to what could have caused it. She couldn't be sure if the source of the destruction was even a person. How would she be able to tell if a wild animal had snuck its way into her house and Demyx had tried to fend it off? She couldn't know if that was possible.

There were so many things she didn't know.

She didn't know why Demyx had bothered to leave her alive after that gun incident. She didn't know why she had tried to use her parent's gun against Demyx. She didn't know why Demyx had really even left her alone in the first place when that had happened. She didn't know what Demyx was thinking then. She never knew how Demyx thought. She never knew why Demyx did the things he did, or why he would do them in that particular way. She never knew why Demyx would be capable of being so boyish, immature even one minute, and then for days afterwards he would always be this emotionless lump of a man. She didn't know who Demyx really was, or what his purpose was.

She didn't even know what he looked like.

Was Demyx even his real name? That was a question she pondered every so often, but she never really put any serious thought into it. What did she really know about this man? She listed all the things that she knew off the top of her head, but each one was pathetically basic. She tried to think of more intimate things she knew about him, but the only thing that she could think of was that he apparently liked to take naps. She knew as much as she did about the man as an average every day person knew about that stranger they passed in the park three weeks ago.

She knew that he was a man. She knew that he was taller than her. She knew that he wore a black cloak; well, she knew that he wore clothing in general. She knew that he ate. She knew that he slept. She knew that he was alive. She knew that he could be something one moment and be something else entirely the next. She knew that every time she thought she had figured something about him out, he would manage to contradict every single one of her thoughts. She knew that while she understood nothing about him he understood her almost, if not completely.

He knew so much about her. He figured her almost her entire personality out while she could barely figure out which room he was in half of the time. He had certainly figured out her fears easily enough.

In fact, ever since she had met him all of the fears she had gotten over seemed to have just come back to her; they came back to her as if they were never really gone in the first place. Why was it that all of the confidence she had spent years building up shattered to pieces all on the one day she met him? Before she had met Demyx she would've had no problem with sitting near a stranger. She could have walked around her house like she knew it wasn't going to explode into blood before she met him. It was like all of these fears she had were buried deep inside of her, and his mere presence dug all of them back up again.

In her mind, it was as simple as that. All of the fear she had ever felt was really just in the back of her mind, and she had just pushed it to the side all of these years. She had never really gotten over any of her fears. She had never conquered any of her problems, and that she had never just woken up one day to realize that the shadow in her closet that looked like a monster was really just a baggy sweater. She had run away from her fears, never conquering any of them, and now that she had nowhere to run they were coming to get her. That's what her mind told her.

Then why did she have this feeling, deep down inside of her, that there was so much more to this than that?

She squirmed in her seat, looking around at the mint colored wallpaper on the walls, attempting to focus herself on the floral pattern instead of her uncomfortable thoughts. The free, solitary feeling that she had almost enjoyed earlier was suddenly starting to bother her, and it was really making her antsy now.

She spent a few minutes of her time looking at the walls. She found herself falling back into her thoughts after a while, so she tried to distract herself with something else. There weren't any more magazines that interested her, so she gave up the idea of reading something. Instead, she picked up one of the knitting magazines she was reading earlier, and started to brainstorm ideas.

Looking at some of the finished pieces of clothing in the picture, she tried to figure out what type of stitch had been used on what, and if it could be replicated with a different stitching pattern. Some of them could easily be created with different stitching techniques while others had to be done in with a particular stitching technique in order to work. Ignoring the articles that described how each specific piece was made, she busied herself by thinking of how she could do the same thing on her own.

That one sweater she liked seemed to have been made with a classic knit one purl two pattern, but she had always preferred using a knit two purl one pattern; not that it really mattered since both sets of stitches would yield the same results, just reversed…

"Miss?"

Heather looked up from the magazine, and turned her head towards the receptionist that had spoken. Her eyes widened when she caught a glance of the clock above the other woman's head. With the help of the time the clock proclaimed, she realized that she had spent a good few hours thinking about all of the knitting projects she could do. She had managed to make herself so focused that she hadn't even noticed the afternoon turn into night.

"Yes?" She responded.

The receptionist gestured for her to walk over, so, after setting the magazine back onto the table, she walked over to the white desk the woman was sitting behind. The woman watched her as she did so, and only when she got closer did she realize that there was a man dressed in a white lab coat standing next to her. She immediately assumed he was a doctor. He looked at her, his facial expression neutral, but in no way unfriendly.

The doctor, as proven by his professional title being stitched onto his coat, gestured for her to follow him. With a small bit of reluctance, she did so. He stopped walking when they were merely to the side of the large room, a bit more private from the other people around, and turned to face her.

"Mr. Black is out of surgery now." The doctor said.

All sorts of emotions rushed to her at the doctor's sentence, but she didn't take any of them in. While a bit dazed by them for a moment, she was far too focused on the man in front of her to focus on her emotional response to his words.

"So far there hasn't been any kind of abnormalities to speak of, and despite the seriousness of his injuries, we believe that he will be alright." The doctor said.

A flood of feelings went through her again. She didn't really care as to think about why she specifically felt what she was feeling, only caring about what the doctor in front of her said. That was what was really important, after all.

"Even though his vitals are all good, we still want to keep him here for a few days. His small intestine was punctured because of the stab wound, but thankfully it was really only grazed instead of being cut straight through. His large intestine was left untouched, which is very lucky. Despite the fact that there is no longer the risk of any of his digestion fluid leaking out and causing damage, there is still a slight chance that either his small intestine or his skin around the wound can become infected. We gave him antibiotics to prevent them from becoming infected, and he will need to continue having antibiotics administrated for the next few days. Due to this, and due to the other afflictions he had besides the stab wound that affected his condition, we would like to keep him here for a while." The doctor said.

He paused for a moment. She realized after a minute that he had been waiting for her to say something. He was probably waiting for her to ask him a question about something he said, maybe ask about how long they were going to keep him here at the hospital, but when he realized that she had nothing to comment on he continued speaking, as if nothing had ever stopped him in the first place.

"There isn't anything else really besides that, and we believe that he will make a full recovery in due time. The other injuries he sustained were not as serious as his stab wound, and will not have any considerable effect on him. While we will only keep him here for about ten days, give or take, it will still take him about a month for him to fully recover from this. He should take it easy when he gets back home. No strenuous activity; especially things like lifting heavy objects. He should have a checkup a month after his release, and if his wounds are healed, then he can have an appointment scheduled to have his sutures removed. If not, then the sutures that he received in the surgery will have to be removed in two months, after making sure that the skin around the wound has sealed over, of course." He said, explaining every detail to her like it was routine.

Heather nodded her head in response to his words, clarifying that she understood. The doctor looked at her for a moment, but then it seemed as if he wasn't looking at her, his eyes glazed over.

Suddenly a vibrating noise sounded, causing her to jump. The doctor on the other hand simply snapped out of his reverie and put his hand into his pocket, pulling out a pager. She watched as his eyes scanned over the mechanism for a moment before he hit a button on it and pocketed the object once again.

"I'm sorry, but please excuse me. I have another patient to attend to at the moment." The doctor said, turning around to face the hallway. "The receptionist can tell you where to go now, so please go speak to her. I wish Mr. Black well, and make sure he schedules a checkup appointment for next month."

Using that as his goodbye, the doctor started walking quickly down the hallway, and vanished down one of the many organized corridors. She looked at the spot where he last was before she looked over her shoulder at the receptionist. The woman was typing away on her computer while she talked to someone at the desk. She said something to the woman in front of her, pointed down one of the hallways, and the other woman started to walk away in that direction. Seeing that the receptionist was now free to speak to, she walked over to the desk where the woman sat.

The receptionist looked up at her once she noticed that she was there, and she instantly seemed to understand.

"Oh hello. You're here about Mr.… Mr. Black, correct?" The receptionist asked. She shook her head positively, and the woman started typing on her computer again. Without looking up from the screen, she continued. "Mr. Black is currently in the west wing; room three-three-nine. Visiting time is almost up, but there's still about an hour left. You should be fine."

The receptionist looked up from her computer, and at her for a brief second before she pointed to the hallway to her left.

"To get there you go straight down that hallway and make the first right. From there you can use the elevator to go up to the third floor. When you get out of the elevator you go straight to the left, and follow the hallway. You'll come across an intersection there, and you make another left. His room will be on the right-hand side." The receptionist explained.

"Thank you." She said softly.

The receptionist nodded in reply as she started to work again.

Heather turned away from the desk and started to follow the instructions she was given. She went down the hallway, focusing on the walls instead of thinking about what was going to happen next. She didn't want to think about it. The more she thought about it the more questions she would think of. For all the questions she would think of there wouldn't be an answer for them. The last thing she needed now was to be frustrated from her own lack of answers.

When the hallway became a crossing she turned right, and went up to the elevator. She pushed the button there, uncharacteristically tapping her foot in anxiety. She couldn't think of what was going to happen now, no matter how much she wanted to. Normally she would've given into the urge to think about it, even if she didn't get an answer, but she felt like she should try to be smart about this for once. She knew that thinking about it would get her nowhere since it would happen in a few minutes, and when it did it would be nothing like she could've thought of.

It was always like that.

The elevator opened, letting out a teenager a couple of years younger than herself, and she stepped in. The doors slid shut as she hit the button that was marked with a number three.

Unlike what the ever common stereotype said, no music played in the elevator. All she heard was the racketing sound of the elevator rising up from the ground floor, and a little clicking sound coming from something. She distracted herself with thinking about what that clinking sound was, but she didn't come up with a reasonable answer before the elevator doors opened.

Forgetting that the fluorescent lights in the hallway were brighter than the lights in the elevator were, she immediately winced when she looked out the doors at them. However, her eyes adapted to the light very quickly and she stepped out of the elevator before the doors shut again.

She took a moment to look at her surroundings, in order to give herself something to think about as she walked to the left, something that wasn't about what was down the hall. She felt herself start to sweat, and she bit into her bottom lip. Her heart pounded in her chest; threatening to jump out at any second. She was almost there. She looked around as she walked, looking for something, anything, to distract her. Even though she was nearly there she didn't want to think about what would happen next.

The hallway broke into another intersection, and for a second her heart felt like it exploded inside of her as she looked down the left hall.

She gulped, the sensation distracting her for a split second. Her heart slowed down as she grinded her teeth against her bottom lip, and she wiggled her fingers around nervously at her sides. She started walking down the hallway, looking at the numbers on the plates next to their respective door as she went.

She looked at the walls for a brief moment, but she quickened her pace as she spotted the door she wanted access to. She stood in front of it, looking at the plate marking the room's number as three-three-nine. She laid her hand on the knob, steeling herself as much as she could for the person she was about to see on the other side.

His hair reached his shoulders in length, and in color it was a shade of dark blonde. Despite the fact that it was laying straight down, it was a bit ruffled, suggesting that he hadn't brushed his hair or he had just woken up. A few straw hairs found their way onto his face, but he didn't seem to mind them. His skin was lightly colored, but a bit tan, as if he was in the sun regularly; that, or it was just his natural skin color. His eyebrows were angular in shape instead of curved, drawing her to his eyes. His irises were a color somewhere in between blue and green, almost like the color people described the sea to be, and the second she walked into the door those eyes turned to her.

"Hey Heather!" Demyx said cheerfully, his boyish voice stunning her. "C'mon in! There's a seat right here for you."

She looked at the chair that he leaned his hand towards for a second, still stunned by his appearance. She was so focused his condition and talking to him again that she didn't think about the fact that he probably wouldn't be in his cloak. She tried to sneak a glance at him, to get a look at his appearance once more, but he locked eyes with her. He smiled happily at her, and then his smile morphed into a grin as he retreated his hand.

She looked back over to the chair and, rather timidly, walked over to it. As she stood next to it she just looked at it for a second before she sat down in it, trying to hide her hesitation from him as she sat down next to him.

"You know, this is the first time we've ever been face to face." He said, smiling all the while before his face contorted into a thoughtful expression as he continued, making various hand gestures as he did so. "Well, we've been face to face before, but I was the only one that ever saw your face. So I guess that means I've been face to face with you, while this is really only your first time being face to face with me... ah, whatever."

He cleared his throat, not due to any sort of discomfort, but apparently to rest his throat before he continued even though he didn't say much. He looked at her for a moment, apparently just enjoying her company. She resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Anyway, first off, I do have to tell you that my hair is _not_ normally like this." He said, grasping a handful of the hair hanging on the side of head, and started glaring at it. "It actually bothers me with the way it is now. I normally have it in this really cool style, and I've been itching to put it back in it. I just don't have a comb at the moment though, or a mirror, so I can't do it right now. I'd describe what it looks like, but I think it'll be cooler for you to see it for yourself. It can be a surprise that way! So yeah, don't associate this hairstyle with me. Just wait until I can fix it up, and then you get to see what I really look like."

She just looked at him. Some vaguely familiar questions came to her as she wondered why he was being so casual about everything. She sort of remembered wondering about something like this before, but she wasn't sure when. There were so many questions she had, so many things she wanted to know. What had happened to him? Why was he talking like this? She wanted an answer for each one, and there were so many she wanted to ask.

She just couldn't ask them.

He leaned back on the bed he was laying on for a moment, simply relaxing. He put his arms behind his head, and turned so that he was looking her in the eyes. The large smile that already donned his face grew.

"Now, with that said, I have some great news." He said enthusiastically, moving his left arm out from underneath his head in order to make gestures with it. "I'm in great shape now! They patched me up, and I should be good as new in just a couple of days. I'm allowed to leave tonight."

Heather froze, and she stared at Demyx.

"Isn't that great?"

She dumbly nodded in response to his excited question, and seemingly pleased with that, he went back to relaxing.

The doctor said that he was going to stay here for a week or two. He said that it would take Demyx a month to be close to full recovery.

What was he talking about? He couldn't be allowed to leave tonight… could he?

"Hey." Demyx said, making her focus on him as his smile turned into a grin. "Check this out."

She blinked at him, and watched as he easily sat up from where he was leaning. With an excited looking grin he rotated his body, which made her panic as she thought of the state he was in, and he set his feet on the ground. With little effort, he pushed himself off the bed and stood up.

She gasped, and his grin seemed to grow.

Earlier that day she had found him struggling to remain conscious, barely able to hold himself up against a shelf, let alone capable of putting all of his weight onto his feet. Before she could start questioning how that was possible, she noticed that he wasn't wearing hospital clothing. Instead, he was wearing a long sleeved black shirt that only left his neck and hands exposed that was tucked into his pants. He was wearing long pants that were the same color as the shirt, help up by a black belt, and they were tucked also tucked in. They were tucked into the pair of black boots with a white rim at the top that she had seen him wearing before. She had seen that he was wearing this outfit a few moments ago, but she hadn't taken note of it until she was really looking at it.

"I'm all ready to go! When the nurse was in here earlier, I was so eager to get out of here that I asked her for my paperwork, and I signed out. Now here," He said as he reached into the drawer next to his bed and plopped something onto her lap.

She looked down in confusion at what she realized was his cloak, and watched as he waved his hand at the window. The evening sky behind it was dark, typical of winter, and a few sprinkles of snow were falling to the ground.

"It's pretty late. Now, I'll be fine in my clothes right now, but I don't think you'd be all that warm in your pajamas." He said, laughing as he waved a hand at the blue flannel clothing she was wearing. For some reason she felt like nibbling on her lips again. "Put that on and we'll go."

He reached a hand down to her, and she was reminded of the last time he had lent her his hand. Hesitant for a moment, she slowly put her right hand in his, allowing him to pull her up.

She grasped the sloppily folded cloak in her arms by its shoulders, allowing it to unravel to the ground in its tattered glory. It looked as bad as it did earlier with all of those tears running through it, but she could tell that it would still cover her. Removing one hand from the shoulders, she slowly lowered the top zipper, taking in how easier it was to do so than most zippers. She gently slid her bare right arm into it, surprised that the sleeves of the tee-shirt she was wearing didn't roll up when she pulled it over her shoulder. She did the same with her left arm, and pulled the top zipper back up.

Now that she was actually wearing it, she realized that it was more of a coat than a cloak. Even though she knew that cloaks didn't have sleeves, she had still considered this coat one, and was actually rather surprised to find it wasn't as similar to a cloak as she had first thought.

Setting the thought aside, she looked to him, but he gestured for her to zip the bottom zipper as well. Looking at the summer sandals she had hastily put on earlier, she agreed with his sentiments. What was she thinking when she put those shoes on?

She was probably thinking about the man bleeding to death in her parents' closet.

The coat was too big for her, which made sense since Demyx was taller than her. It completely covered her, and the bottom hem of the coat sat onto the ground instead of resting above her feet like it did for him. The arms were a little bit too long for her, and fell over her hands. The coat felt odd on her. Not in the sense that the fabric was uncomfortable or the fact that it was too big for her; it felt… out of place. It felt concealing, protective even, but there was something else there, something that was bothering her, something that felt… wrong.

She felt smothered.

Demyx smiled at her again, and started to walk towards the exit. She mechanically followed him. He opened the door, letting her go out in front of him, and walked out himself.

"Ah wait a minute!" He said suddenly, a surprised expression now on his face. "I forgot my gloves! Be right back, wait here for me."

He turned around and headed back into the room. She stood there, looking around. A few minutes passed and he still wasn't out of the room. Did he lose them? Before she could think about it the door opened revealing him, now wearing gloves on his hands and a sheepish grin on his face.

"Sorry, my bad. Let's go- hold on." He said suddenly, reaching over her shoulders and pulling up the hood of the coat. "It's going to be cold out there, so keep this up. _Now_ let's go!"

He gave her an enthusiastic smile and put an arm around her shoulder in order to lead her as he was walking.

For some reason, she had an odd feeling about this. Something just didn't add up. The feeling just increased when instead of turning into the direction of the elevator, he turned them into the opposite direction.

At a walking pace, he directed her down several corridors she was in no way familiar with. They came to a door at the end of a hall, and he opened it to reveal a stairwell. Wordlessly, he led them down the stairs, going down very slowly, and abruptly stopping them every once in a while. Once they reached the bottom he opened the door for them very quietly, and walked her out of it, shutting the door just as quietly. He led her down a few more corridors until they reached what appeared to be an exit. Very carefully, he opened the door, and let them out before he shut the door. He continued to lead her very carefully, and he only seemed to go back to his relaxed attitude once they had walked out of the hospital parking lot.

The feeling grew.


	9. To Flee

It was silent. One could drop a pin, and the sound of that pin landing would echo all around. Then again, a pin might have dropped, and she never would've heard. The room was devoid of life, but at the same time that was what it held. It was proof of life.

This room had an ascending floor. It was constructed so a pathway lay in the middle, and it served as a divider that separated the four leveled rows at its sides. Tubes that looked as if they were thorn covered vines raked the walls, and the tubes extended from what was at the end of the pathway. At the end of the pathway was a glowing ball of light and in that glowing light was what looked to be like restraints rotated about. The restraints circled around the large image of an odd grey colored cross that was floating in center of the light, making it so that the cross was blocked off.

Due to the fact that the room was triangular in shape, the bottom row was the widest of all of the other rows. The second row was half the size of the first row. The third row was half the size of the row before it, and the final row near the end of the pathway was half of that size. Each row had room to walk on, but that room to walk on was necessary to make sure one wouldn't step upon what should not be stepped upon. The walkway space of the rows changed as they got higher, for the bottom row had walking space that overlooked the entrance as well as serving the purpose as being walls around the entrance, while the top row was merely a small amount of elevated space with no real use. The main point of this room, a room among many rooms, was what was placed upon the rows.

All of the three bottom rows were characterized by the fact that there were panels and corresponding doors on them. The top row wasn't even more than a foot long, and as a result it didn't have panels on either side of it. The panels took up about half of each row, and each row had one less panel than the one before.

The second row, the top middle row, had two panels, one on each side. The one on the left side was blue in color; the blue light illuminated the image of an arrow gun that was imprinted on it. Presented behind the panel was a door-like structure. The door had a sharp tip, and it was circular in shape in the center of it while it straightened out into a rectangular shape when it was about half of the way down. If anything, the shape of the door resembled an old fashioned keyhole. The door structure was sealed shut, and a black replica of the cross shape in the light behind it was embossed upon its surface.

The one on the right was not much different from this. It was also blue in color, the blue light being the most prominent feature. Like the other panel there was an image imprinted on it, but instead of guns there was a lance. The lance was the brightest thing on the panel, the bright blue light illuminating it in particular. There was a door behind it that was identical to that of the door on the other side of the row, a cross also on it.

The bottom middle row, the third row, had two panels on both sides. Some of these panels, however, were different. Instead of blue, the panel on the left side closest to the wall was colored a faded red, as if it was a burned out light. It only lit up around the image of a large spiked shield stamped upon it. Another difference was that instead of a door-structure being behind the panel was what appeared to be remains, only being two thirds intact. It was better than the door-like structure next to it though, despite its tattered state. The door-like structure next to it on the other hand was a far cry from its original shape, as only the two bottom corners remained, making it look like it had a triangle shape was cut out between the two. The panel before it was also red in color, and it had an image of a complex axe sword on it.

The panel closest to the pathway on the other side wasn't in as good shape as the ones before it. This one was in shambles. The door-structure's remains were simply littered on the image, blocking it completely from sight, and only a few spots of the red panel beneath were visible. The circular part of the door laid cracked on the walking space of the level with the lance panel above the level it was supposed to be on. In contrast to the devastated state the panel next to it was in, the panel closest to the wall was in perfect shape. It was glowing a bright blue like the panel in the upper left corner was, and the image of an ornate claymore was floodlit. Behind it was a keyhole shaped structure identical to the one behind the sniper gun panel, and it was also sealed shut with the same black cross-like shape embossed on it.

In the final row, the longest row, there were six panels. Like the rows that were elevated higher than it was each side of the row had half the total amount of panels on it.

The two panels closest to the pathway on the right were in similar shape. Both of the door structures were ruined. The one closest to the pathway was eliminated down to an tenth of its proper size, and the door structure in the middle was ripped in half, the circular top of it laying on the level above it while the bottom half was partially uprooted from its spot, the only reason that it was still standing up was because it was leaning against the small wall behind it. Both of the panels were red, and their imprinted images were lit up very weakly. The panel closest to the pathway had the image of an elegant scythe illustrated upon it, and the panel in the middle had a peculiar set of knives as its image, four of them, made as if one were to hold them in between their fingers.

The odd one out of the three was the one closest to the wall. The door structure behind it was completely intact along with the cross shape being embossed upon it. The panel before it was bright blue, making the image of two unique blades crossed together shine.

On the other side of the row another two panels were comparable. Both of them were glowing bright blue, each of their images glowing. The image of the panel closest to the pathway was a card. The card had the cross symbol that was on the door-structure on it, only in the lower right corner, partially cut off. The one closest to the wall had the picture of an intricate weapon that looked to be somewhere in between a chakram and a wind-and-fire wheel in design. Each panel had a door-like structure behind them, and each door was sealed shut with a black cross embossed upon it.

In between them was another panel. It was almost the same as them, but there was a difference. The panel was a bright shade of blue as well, and the image of a somewhat large sitar on it was accentuated by the light produced. That was the same. The door behind it was identical to the ones next to them as well. It just… felt different. It felt almost as if it was more familiar to her, like she knew of it somehow. Then again, everything here was sort of familiar to her, but this one especially so.

It was odd. All of this was familiar to her, but at the same time it wasn't. She felt as if she didn't know what half of the images were besides weapons, only because around half of the images were obviously weapons at that, but she also felt as if she knew each one in detail. It was very odd.

There were twelve panels total, and each had their corresponding door. Their coloring was not random; they were their specific color for a reason. She knew this for some reason, but she wasn't sure why. She knew that all of these panels were blue recently. Maybe around a few days ago they were blue, or only a few weeks. She felt as if they didn't all become red at the same time though. As of now there were five red panels- the third one, the fourth one, the fifth one, the tenth one, and the eleventh one. The first, second, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and twelfth panels were blue.

The seventh panel, the chakram panel, gave her an odd feeling. It was like she had half-expected it to be red, but it was still blue. The odd inklings she had about this place gave her no answer for why that was though.

She stood at the middle of the room, behind a group of cloaked people. She had the distinct feeling that she wasn't actually in the room, but she was able to watch it for some reason. All of the people in front of her were obviously male, due to the fact that their coats were tight enough to show their physiques, and almost each one of them had their backs to her. Some of them were notably taller than the others, and some of them were more notably muscular than the others. Body wise, the most notable member of the group was a person that seemed to be a boy, maybe a teenager that was just hitting puberty, who was standing to the far right in the group along with a skinny man.

She noticed the skinny man before she took note of the others, simply because he was the only one that wasn't wearing a hood. Without his hood on she saw that he had long, literally red hair that was just ridiculously spiked into the air. It was so long that she couldn't get a glance of his skin besides the occasional glimpse of his ears, and from the angle that he standing at, she wasn't able to see his face either. She couldn't see him completely, but she instantly felt that he was familiar. Oddly, she felt that she hadn't completely expected him to be there, almost like the seventh panel.

Seven of the cloaked people in front of her were in a line of sorts; some of them stayed closer to a select few people rather than the others, like the skinny man and the boy did, while some of them stayed a distance away from the others. All of them, however, were facing towards the one person that wasn't in that makeshift line.

It was a man.

He was familiar, just like everything and everyone else here. He was tall, but not gigantic. He was also muscular, but not overly so. His appearance wasn't stark, but that was what made him more notable than the others.

From the way his hood was moving, he apparently started speaking. Everyone stopped what they were doing prior, and paid attention to him. Most of their attention appeared to be rapt on him, with the redheaded man occasionally appearing to say something himself when the one man gestured to him, as if responding to something said. The boy would look between the two of them as they spoke. Another man similar in physique to the redhead appeared to be speaking as well, and even though she couldn't hear what he was saying, she had the feeling that most of his words were very calm. The others in the group spoke as well, throwing their own two cents into the conversation every once in a while.

The only one that didn't seem to be that interested was the one that she was paying the most attention to. He appeared to be paying attention to what was happening, but at the same time he wasn't. Unlike the others, all of who were standing nearby, he was the furthest away. The majority of them stood on the third row, maybe the second, but he was standing on the edge of the fourth. He was slouched slightly, his head lazily turning towards whoever appeared to be speaking at the moment. She noticed that his clothing was slightly different from the others even though they were wearing the same clothing design, as he was one of the only two people that had shoulder pads.

This one she paid the most attention to, even if he was doing nothing to affect the conversation going on at the moment. She didn't know why, but he felt the most familiar to her. In fact, every familiar feeling she had paled in comparison to the one she had about him. She didn't know why though. She felt as if she never knew why.

Everything sort of started to blur together. At some point, when she wasn't sure, the room suddenly became a pitch black space. There was nothing in it besides the darkness, and her; there was nothing in it besides the darkness, her, and that one man. The man still acted like he did in that room, but she saw nothing of it. She just watched him as he went about, acting as if he was still in that room, and completely unaffected by her observance.

* * *

><p>"What is this?" Heather asked, staring at the sight before her, easily forgetting the strange hallucination she had with the shock she now felt.<p>

Demyx didn't reply, instead he stepped over the warning tape placed on the door frame in front of them, and turned to her. After a moment she took the hint. She started to follow him in and reached her hand out to lower the bright yellow tape. Just before her hand made contact with it he grabbed her wrist, and shook his head.

"Don't touch that." He said in a quick, but hushed tone.

She looked back down to the tape, biting the inside of her mouth. With a melodramatic sigh that had a notable whine in its tone, he let go of her wrist and he stepped over the tape again, only to her side. He picked her up by her underarms, ignoring the yelping noise she made, and carefully placed her on the other side of the tape. He gestured his hand for her to move, which she responded to with another squeak before she did so, and he went about getting over the tape himself. Successfully standing on the inside of the house he shut the door behind them before he started looking around the area, allowing her to get a better look of the appearance of the house than she had gotten through the tape as well.

The authority tape only seemed to be blocking off the area outside, for none of it was inside. Instead, there were little yellow stands with black numbers that were scattered around the rooms. Each one was in a particular spot, some of them grouped together. She figured that there was a sign labeled number one somewhere in the mix, but the closest number to that she could see at the moment was number ten. The furniture remained unmoved from the way it was when she was here earlier today, and it seemed like whoever set those signs up was careful to keep it that way.

Her house was a crime scene.

She stared. Of all the things she had expected see this was far from it, but as she looked over everything, she started to understand why this had happened. She had called emergency services after all. When they had seen the condition that Demyx was in and the state of the house they had to have been suspicious. It was common sense. What reason would the authorities have for not investigating a place that was in shambles, and at that had a man almost die from a stab wound inside of it?

She looked around at the living room, surprised to see that it was not all that bad compared to the other rooms. She hadn't really paid attention to the condition of this room earlier, as she was too focused on Demyx to really notice much of anything. Furniture was out of place from where it was supposed to be, but nothing besides the coffee table was broken. For whatever reason a cup was laying on the floor, but it wasn't broken either.

She didn't have the courage to wander around on her own, but a part of her wanted to. She was curious about what had happened in her house; very curious. However, she had a feeling that she would be even more disturbed than she already was if she did so.

"We're here! Home sweet home." He said, steering her out of her observations. For a second, she thought she could hear sarcasm in his cheerful remark. "It's too bad we're not going to stay here for long. Follow me. Make sure not to touch anything."

Frowning, she followed what him as he went into the bloody hallway, and stopped in front of her room. He opened the door, and gestured for her to go inside. She, once again, followed his instructions. Her room hadn't changed that much from she had last seen it. In fact, it looked untouched. Everything was in place from the day she had first met him.

Her bed was unmade, a pair of her favorite slippers at the foot of it, partially covered by the pale blue sheets. The walls were unmarred, still the same beige they had always been, and the row of circles at the top of the walls was still present. The window was wide, taking up the majority of the wall in front of her, and it was covered only by her cheap blinds that were about an inch too small in width. On the opposite side of the window was a small rack that held some of her current in-progress knitting projects. Her yarn container sat underneath her desk along the same wall as the door, taking up the room for where her chair should be, which left her chair sitting out of the hole in the desk specifically made for storing it. Random items littered the surface of her desk, and some of her knitting needles poked out from underneath a folder. Her closet doors were closed, a hanger dangling on one of the knobs.

"Alright then." Demyx began. He walked over to the closet doors, opened them, and started to look through her clothing. "Now, you need to change. You aren't going to be wearing what you have on right now forever. Instead, err, how 'bout something with long sleeves? That tee-shirt you're wearing isn't exactly the best thing to wear when it's snowing outside."

He didn't really wait for a response as he started looking through her clothing, making random noises of judgment as he went through them, and in a moment he seemed to have found what he was looking for. He pulled off a long-sleeved dark blue shirt from its hanger, and draped it on his free arm. She never really wore that particular shirt without a sweater. He looked back to her clothing again; he opened up the drawers inside, and this time removed a dark pair of pants from an upper drawer, probably the only pair of dark pants she owned. Clothes draped on his arms, he turned to her, and extended the clothes to her.

"Here; change into these. Uh… you can get your underwear yourself. Just make sure not to move anything out of place when you grab them." He said, walking over to the door. "Whenever you're done just say so. I'll be waiting outside here."

Without further ado, he turned the door knob, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. She looked at the door. Nervously, she looked through the crack between the door and the doorframe, as if he could see through the tiny gap that even she couldn't look through. Finding the crack to be alright, she looked at the door once more, and took a deep breath in her nose as she started to undress.

Heather followed his instructions, being careful not to touch anything that didn't need to be touched as she grabbed a pair of underclothing to wear. With all of her clothes in hand, she left her pajamas to sit on the ground while she carefully set Demyx's coat onto her bed as she put her new clothing on.

She looked down at herself, observing her new attire. How long had it been since she had last changed her clothes on her own?

She pondered the question for a moment. She found that she wasn't bothered by the fact that she hadn't changed her clothing for a while now. It wasn't as if she was wearing the exact same clothing she had worn the day she had met him. Whenever he brought her to the bathrooms in the morning she found that he would leave some clothing from her closet for her to change into. It was usually pajamas though, and he only rarely picked up something from her daily wear. He gave her nothing fancy, just something basic to wear. Most of her day-time clothes were things she had knitted that were a bit fancier than her pajamas, and he seemed to avoid giving her those.

She had wondered if it was his way of being nice at some point. He didn't really need to do that. It wasn't like it would kill her if he didn't give her a change of clothing, so maybe he did that to be nice... or he just did that because he felt like it. She never really thought all that much about this particular thing he did.

She didn't ever really know what to think of him.

"Umm…" She murmured to herself before she swallowed and called out. "I'm done now."

True to his word, she saw the door knob twist and in walked Demyx with that laid-back smile of his plastered onto his face. She jumped a little at his appearance, and his face contorted into a look of confusion.

She still wasn't used to seeing him without his face covered. Throughout the entire trek back here whenever she looked over to him she still pictured him with the hood of his coat over his head and she would be surprised when she saw him without the coat on. The fact that he made so many facial expressions just made it even more shocking to compare him to what he looked like with the coat on.

His confused expression was brief. His facial features relaxed into a neutral expression, and he raised a pair of what she recognized as her boots clutched in his hand.

"You know how cold it is out there. You should put these on; we're going to leave in a minute." He said.

She nodded in response. He started walking over to her, and just as her breath was starting to hitch, he presented the boots in his hand to her. She took them in her hands, and bent over to set them on the floor just as he bent down to the ground to pick up the pajamas on the floor. He held them up, and started to flap them in the air. She watched, slipping the dark boots over her new socks, as he almost lazily worked all of the wrinkles out of them before he started smiling again.

He draped them over his arm and went over to the closet. He opened the doors slowly, and he quickly skimmed through the contents. He removed the hanger the shirt she was now wearing was formerly on, and he slipped the tee-shirt onto it. With the shirt now on it, he carefully put the hanger back into place. He picked up the pants draped on his arm, and he neatly folded them. He opened the drawer he had gotten her current pants from, and he neatly set the pajama pants onto the spot her current pants had come from before he shut the drawer. It was as if those clothes had been there the entire time. He closed the closet doors, and turned back to face her.

"Well, that was pretty easy. That's all we needed here." He said, raising his arms into the air to use them to gesture as he continued. "It's not really the best of reasons to come back here, but you really needed some clothes. With the weather like it is now you'd freeze to death before we'd get anywhere, so there wasn't really any other choice."

He walked towards her again, and stood at her side for a moment. He looked down to her with that usual grin on his face before he looked to the bedroom door and walked over to it.

"C'mon." He said, flapping a hand towards the door. "We gotta' go. We can't take anything else here besides those clothes, so we're just going to leave now. I know a place around that we can crash for the night."

She nodded and walked up to him. He reached for the door knob, grabbed it in his hands, and just as he looked like he was about to turn it he removed his hand from it.

"You know, I wasn't going to bring this up at all. You've been pretty quiet, which I do appreciate, but it's just kinda'... weird, I guess. Since you're being so quiet I don't have to talk about anything that I don't want to. Normally I'd be pretty down with that, but this is sort of… different." He said.

As he spoke he waved his right hand in the air as he went along. His other hand clasped his right elbow, and made his arms look casually half-crossed over his chest. His arms weren't touching his chest though.

"You haven't said much of anything; as in, anything at all. Anybody else I know of would've dogged me about what was going on, what we were doing here, or something else like that." He started, lowering his left arm to his side. He began to move his right hand at her direction now as he continued. "You on the other hand, haven't said a word. You did a little bit earlier, but you haven't asked me anything else since then. You're the only person that I can think of that won't bring up something that you want to know to me; everyone else I can think of would have already hounded me into talking about whatever they wanted to know."

He shrugged his shoulders at that statement, took in a breath, and continued.

"I don't really like talking about this sort of thing, but it's killing the mood. Plus, it's a bit boring to talk all day long without a reply from the person I'm talking to, so why is it that you're still so nervous around me when I haven't done anything to you?"

He looked at her, perplexity clearly written all over his face, and Heather found that she couldn't answer him. She _was_ nervous around him. She was having a rough time saying even a word to him. She just didn't have any idea as to what to think of him, and because of that she had no idea as to what to say to him. She couldn't say more than a word to him without feeling overwhelmed. It was actually easier to speak with him when she couldn't see his face. When his face was shadowed she could just make assumptions as to what he was thinking, but now that she could see his face she could see his reactions to things.

That made her uncomfortable. For some reason, his reactions to things made her feel unnerved. For some reason, the unnerved feeling she had reminded her of how she felt when a person was lying, but she doubted that. How could someone's emotions be a lie?

"I-" She started, realizing that she was on the spot. "I... I just, don't feel... um..."

The sound of the front door being opened cut her off.

She froze, and she saw him stiffen as well as the sound of footsteps rung through the air. From the sound of things, people started walking through the door, talking to one another. Some of the voices sounded stern, even to the point of sounding authoritative, whilst others sounded more receptive. None of them sounded very easy going though, and she could practically feel the serious atmosphere from where she was standing.

Demyx reacted immediately. He put a gloved finger over his mouth, and soundlessly walked over to the bed. He put the cloak on her shoulders, and bent over to silently zip the cloak as far as it would go before he flipped the hood over her head. He put his right arm around her back, and with his other arm he picked her up, not making any kind of sound. She remained silent as he did so; her mind too focused on processing what was happening instead of paying attention to her feelings. The normally squeaky wood underneath of his feet didn't seem to make even a little tic of a sound as he walked over to the window.

He extended his left arm around her in order to remove his right, and with his right hand he started to work with the lock. He opened it, and he slowly opened the window, moving it so slowly that it didn't even snag in place like it normally did.

Having deemed the window open enough, he shifted her in his arm again, and sat over the window. She sat on his leg for a moment, trying to watch what he was doing with his left arm now that it was free. Within seconds he dropped to the ground, making her become rigid within his arms due to the unexpectedness of his action.

He set her on the ground, and reached up to the window. The quickness of his actions made her unsteady on her feet, and she tried to hold herself up with her new dizziness. Even though she reached out towards the wall to help keep herself upright, the action of stretching her arm out was just enough to knock her completely off balance, and her shoulder collided with the pipe of the gutter as she tripped. She cried out, and instantaneously after clutched her shoulder.

The gutter wasn't very hard, so the pain, while sudden, was only temporary. With the pain fading as quickly as it had come, she looked uncertainly towards the man in front of her, wondering what his reaction would be.

She watched as he eased the window down a bit faster than he had been a moment before. With the window shut, he turned to her, grabbed a hold of her wrist, and raised his free arm. As he raised his right arm, she heard a rippling sound start with his movements. It was almost like a tearing sound, but it sounded much too gentle on the ears to be something as rough as that. Then the sound changed into a more wispy sound, almost like a fire, just without the crackles. With that sound in her ears, her vision of the area in front of them unexpectedly became blocked by what appeared to be a fire.

She watched it, torn between feeling horrified or fascinated at the sight before her. She wasn't sure what it was. While it looked similar to a fire, it also resembled swirling air. It appeared to be black at first glance, but it had a mixture of colors varying from dark blue to dark purple that made it appear so. The theory that it was fire seemed wrong as it did nothing to the land or the house; not even scorching the ground underneath of it. It looked like it was related to a fire yet it moved as if it was water, even though it went into the air instead of down to the ground like fire did. She could see it dissipate in the air just inches above her head, but somehow it continued on.

"This'll be a bit weird, Heather." Demyx said, snapping her out of her amazed observations. "Don't worry; nothing bad will happen, but it'll be pretty weird going in there. We can talk more in a minute."

She was just about to wonder what he meant when he shifted his grip on her. He wrapped an arm around her, lifting her slightly as he walked forward.

"Police! St-" She vaguely heard a masculine voice yell something before all of sudden, they were somewhere else.

The place they were in had no sky. In fact, it had no ground. Instead of land being underfoot, it looked like that fire-like thing had replaced the land's purpose of being something to stand on. The fire, for it was easier to call it that rather than to wonder about what it was, stretched out in every possible place in a multitude of dark colors. It was still moving about as if it were water instead of fire, and as it went about it was as if it was constantly moving, constantly blending. The fire looked like it enclosed them, but at the same time it seemed like it stretched on forever. It was almost dizzying to look at. Something deep inside of her told her to be cautious here, but she wasn't sure what to be cautious of. Everything about this was so… mysterious.

Mysterious, but it didn't feel like it was in a good way.

"See?" Demyx said, shifting her on his side. "Weird isn't it? You can relax though. Everything is good now."

Once he finished speaking, he shifted her again, but this time he shifted her so he could set her back onto her own feet. She stumbled once again, and nearly grabbed onto him for support. She didn't know why, but she was just very off balanced. Maybe she still wasn't used to being out of that chair...

"Now we_ really_ can't go back there again." He said, once again catching her wandering attention with his boyish voice. She realized now that the voice actually suited his boyish appearance in a way. "Well anyway that's done with, so let's forget about that. More importantly, let's talk about what's going to happen next. See here, we can use this place to get to other places; kind of like a corridor. A corridor without walls sure, but it's still a corridor… sort of. Anyway, we'll just go down this for a while, and then there'll be an opening somewhere down the line. You see how dark this is right now? The opening will be like this, but it'll be lighter. It'll appear in a few minutes, so until then, we walk!"

He looked at her, and she slowly nodded in response. He started walking forward without another word. She stood there, staring as he walked across something that didn't even look to be solid. After a moment, he looked back at her over her shoulder, and then she realized that she should start walking as well. She hurried to where he had stopped to watch her, and when she caught up to him he gave her a little nod. He started to walking, only slower than he had been a moment ago in order to match her slower pace.

They walked on in silence. She didn't know what he could be thinking, but she avoided thinking about him. Instead, she took to observing her surroundings, taking in everything she saw. It was unbelievable. It was almost like some sort of magic; it was just so mystifying, but at the same time it gave her this odd feeling of horrification. Due to this, it was simpler to focus on it instead of the person next to her or the situation as a whole.

She was becoming so sick of the questions that both of them caused.

He started to slow down. She looked over to him, wondering what he was doing, and she slowed down as well. In a moment he stopped walking, and she followed suit. He looked down at her face, and only now did it hit her that he couldn't see her. She could see him, but he couldn't see her. She was wearing the coat while he had nothing on to hide his face from her. His facial expression somehow showed that he had something he really had to say, but she didn't know how it was able to show that.

"Heather, I'm tired of this. It's not my style to be so blunt, but you just won't say anything. You can at least say something- anything, just don't be so quiet. I know you have nothing to say, but the silence is driving me crazy! I may not be into talking all that much, but I can't deal with not having anything to listen to." He said, waving his right hand to the side. His words were serious, but his tone remained childlike through it all. "Alright; since you have nothing to say, I'll give you something to say. What's one of your hobbies?"

She stared at him, stunned.

"Any hobby. Something you like to talk about. Just say something." He said, almost whining.

She remained silent, staring at him. A few moments passed on. After they had passed, he finally looked away from her, and he sighed. He started to walk forward again, not looking back.

"…I…" She started. He stopped in place, turning back to face her at the sound of her uncertain voice. She looked up to him, and then down to the ground before she continued. "I like to knit."

He looked at her wordlessly. Then, just when she was starting to become scared of what he would do, he smiled. He beckoned for her to come back over to him, and after a brief second of looking at him, she did. He started to walk again once she was next to him, and they continued on through the abnormal flames.

"So knitting, huh? I don't really know anything about that, well, besides that you use yarn or string or something, right? Do you knit sweaters, or whatever?" He asked conversationally, while not sounding too keen on the subject, to her, he seemed eager to talk.

For the next few minutes she would respond as simply as she could to his questions, telling him about specific stitching techniques and the materials necessary. He seemed fine with it; he didn't seem very engrossed into the subject, but he seemed satisfied to talk to her. If he had a problem with her not being all that talkative he didn't say anything. She continued to speak with him as they went through the corridor as he called it; anything to ignore it all.


	10. To Falter

"You know, I gotta' say that I would _really_ love one of those sweaters you make right now; even a pink one. I'm not picky."

Next to Heather, Demyx sneezed after he made his joking remark and started to vainly rub his arms in an attempt to warm himself in the cold temperatures. She actually felt a little bad as she watched him do so. She was wearing his coat after all, and he wouldn't be cold if he was wearing it instead of her. She reminded herself that he had willingly given her his coat and tried to shrug off the slight guilt she was feeling.

"I- I'd give you one, but I don't have one of them…" She trailed off as she watched him shiver a little, both of them walking through the built up layer of snow on the ground.

He groaned in a way that she would probably consider comical if she wasn't worried right now, and shook himself like a dog as he fought off another shudder.

"Maybe we should stop for a bit... you're- you're just so cold…" She weakly suggested, watching his movements worriedly.

"Nah, I'm good." He said as he straightened himself out. "If anything, stopping would be worse. If we sat down in the snow we'd be popsicles in matter of minutes, so walking is really the best thing to keep us warm. It doesn't really matter anyway though. We're almost there."

She nodded, and looked back in the direction that they were walking. She was in no way completely comfortable around him, but she found that he was easier to talk to now that she had spoken to him about something she liked. It wasn't too bad. He was almost entertaining with the goofy way he acted. Since it was easier to talk to him she also found it easier to ask him about things even though she was avoiding doing so. It may have been easier, but she didn't particularly enjoy speaking to him.

"Um, where are we going, anyway?" She asked. Her teeth started to chatter a little bit, so she lowered her head in the form-fitting hood. The hood, unlike the rest of the coat, didn't have any tears in it.

They had left what Demyx had called a dark corridor a little while ago. He told her that the opening they found in the corridor wasn't where there destination was, but it wasn't that far away. They had been walking for maybe a half an hour now. They were in a forest of some sort, that she could tell, but that was it. Wherever that dark corridor thing brought them it wasn't anything she was familiar with. There weren't any forests near her town that she was aware of, and the majority of the area was hills. This place was flat.

She still didn't understand what that dark corridor was, but she didn't want to ask him. For all she knew he would get angry at her, or just flat out ignore the question. He seemed prone to ignoring her questions if he didn't want to answer them. She just didn't understand how that corridor… thing… was possible. It defied every single science she had learned. She tried not to think about it now though. When did she understand anything? She didn't understand anything. She didn't understand why she was with him, why this was happening, or just plain why.

She just wanted to know where they were now.

"Just to this little place called The Rut." He said, smiling sheepishly despite the cold. "I know, not the best sounding name, but it's actually a pretty decent place. I heard that it was named after something, but I don't know what."

She nodded, accepting his answer.

"Hey, would you look at that; we're in the town now!" He said, pointing towards what was in front of them.

From behind the trees, the edges of wide buildings were visible. The buildings all seemed to be a bit tall, some of them visible above the tops of the trees before them. They didn't compare to the buildings of the city back home, which confirmed that the place before them wasn't an urban area, or at least, not a very big one. Combined with the pale winter moonlight above, the streetlights just barely let her see made the slightly far off road.

"Okay… the motel shouldn't be very far from here." He said; an almost humorous contemplating look was on his face. He perked up and started to point at something she couldn't see. "Ah- there it is! Right over there! Finally; a bed. Precious sleep here we come."

They continued walking, leaving the forest only minutes later. She followed behind him, occasionally walking next to him when she managed to match his quick pace, and made sure to stay with him as she took in the sights around him. No one seemed to be awake now, but occasionally a car or two would drive on the road that they were walking by. The lights of the buildings around them were pretty much all out, but there were a few places that were lit as they passed them by.

"Are you tired, Heather?" Demyx asked her nonchalantly, catching her off guard.

"Oh, uhm…" She started, but not because she was uncertain of her answer. With Demyx, she tried to answer his questions the way that she thought he would like to hear. She didn't try to outright lie, but she would sometimes tailor her answers so that they would be fine with them. She didn't want him to be angry at her or anything. If she were to make him angry, then she knew that she was being bad.

Being bad meant bad things for her.

She looked at his face, wondering how she should reply. She didn't know what he would be happy with, so she wasn't sure as to what she should say. While she took some time to think about it, he turned to face her, and she had to keep herself from jumping when she saw his face. She still wasn't completely used to seeing his face.

"Just a little bit…" She said, quickly deciding that she should use a more honest approach to giving him her answer.

"That's good then. We'll be able to sleep in a minute anyway. Glad you won't drop the second we walk in the building!" He said cheerfully, humming a little bit to himself as they came to a stop in front of a small building with a sign next to the double doors that said that this place was The Rut. He messed with his hair for a moment, somehow moving it into a position that made it look a bit shorter than it really was. "Well anyway, I'll get us signed in. Just go along with whatever I'm saying."

Before she could wonder what he meant by that he opened the right-hand door, wrapped an arm around her back, and walked them in. Immediately she felt a flush of warmth as she entered the lobby room. The walls were painted a friendly shade of yellow; not too outrageously bright, but not very dull. The room was decorated with pictures hanging on the walls, a few wooden tables against the walls with a few decorative items on them, and a long wooden desk near the staircase. There was a slightly older man sitting behind the desk, looking to be piling papers on the desk. He looked up at the sound of the door closing, and he waved for them to come over to him.

Demyx removed his arm from her shoulders. He subtly gave her a soft thump of the back as a gesture to move forward as he did so himself.

"Oh; hello there. Is there something you need?" The man asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

"Yes; yes there is." Demyx started, an expression caught in between nervousness and exasperation swiftly appearing on his face. She nearly started herself in surprise when she heard him use his deeper tone of voice instead of his boyish one, but thankfully, she kept herself from doing so as she just looked at him.

Why was he suddenly using that voice again?

"You see, our car broke down a little ways down the road, and we couldn't get it to start back up again. We _were_ on our way to stay at a relative's house in the next town, but since we can't get there we don't have anywhere to stay." He said, shoving his left hand in his pocket while looking uneasy. "I know it's very late now, but you don't happen to have a room do you?"

"Well, yes I do. Goodness that's awful; it's cold out there. Do you need someone to come tow it for you, or a phone to call your relative?" The man asked, looking sincerely concerned.

"No. I already called my relative earlier with my cellphone, and I plan on calling a tow truck in the morning." He said in such a bland, unresponsive way that he almost appeared lethargic in doing so. He sighed instantaneously after he finished his statement, tiredly scrunching up his face, an act that made him look older than he was. "We just want to get some sleep."

The man nodded at him, and only looked at her for a split second afterwards. While the man in front of them started to rummage through the desk drawer's on his side, Heather stared at the other man next to her.

This was nothing like him.

Sure, she didn't know all that much about him, but he was acting completely unlike himself. The Demyx she knew would have a laidback attitude as he joked around, maybe a little bit sheepishly at one point or another, as he made dozens of hand gestures every chance he could. That was everything she knew about him. This was completely out of character for him. Even the way he was speaking was odd. He wouldn't ever be this formal when talking to someone, or really, this upfront with someone. He was almost always acting casually, not ever really being rude, and when he was rude he normally apologized. Well, he acted that way around her anyway.

Why was he acting like this though?

Maybe he was just tired, or something. He had said to go with whatever he was saying. What did he mean by that though? Was this what he had meant? If it was what he meant, no, even if it wasn't what he had met, why was he acting like this?

"Here; sign your name right here, and you can pay me the admission fee." The man said, showing him a specific spot on the clipboard. "My name is Tom Senft by the way."

"Doug Thompson." Demyx said curtly, signing the name he just spoke without the slightest bit of hesitation onto the sheet of paper on the board. "This is my wife, Rebecca."

"Well, it's nice to meet you Mr. Thompson, Mrs. Thompson." Tom said, shifting his gaze to both of them correspondingly.

The newly dubbed Rebecca slowly nodded in response, simply speechless, as the man next to her did the same. Demyx toke this all in stride as Heather remained stunned, and reached into the front pocket of his pants, pulling out a wallet. He reached into the wallet, pulled a few bills out, and groggily offered it to the other man.

"Is this enough?" He asked, looking and talking as if he were half-asleep.

Tom clicked his tongue, and only took the majority of the offered bills from Demyx.

"This right here is enough for the night. Good guess on the price though. I better give you your key; you certainly seem to need your sleep at the moment." Tom said, lightly chuckling as he started pulling out a drawer on his side of the desk and starting to put the bills inside of it. "Long ride, right?"

Demyx just nodded. After putting the bills away, Tom set the clipboard down, and dug through another drawer. From it he produced a key, and he handed it to the younger man.

"This is for the room right up the staircase, to the right. It's number two." He said, locking the drawers with his own key before he started to gather the papers on the desk like he had been when they first entered the building. "It's not a couple's room, but it's all that's available at the moment; goodnight now. Sleep well!"

Demyx nodded at the good-natured man, and abruptly put his arm behind her back, as if to support her balance. He started walking, and she promptly followed suit. He led her up the staircase, letting go of her back when they were out of sight. He walked over to the door with a label that marked it as number two. He opened the door, and gestured for her to walk in. Confused what was happening, she did so without much thought, and she heard him shut the door behind them as she looked around the room.

It wasn't very big, which she would have expected if she were actually focusing on that, but it wasn't very small either. The room seemed to be designed based off of practicalities instead of luxury, although it was still physically appealing. The walls were a simple color of beige as was the carpet underneath of them. There was a single fan on the center of the ceiling, and a few heating vents were on the bottom of the walls. There was a window with the blinds down, a door that probably led to a bathroom, and a cabinet in the corner holding a television with two chairs near it. Against the wall were two small beds and a small table with an unlit lamp on it in between them.

Demyx walked over to the closest bed and readily collapsed onto it with a barely muted thud. A moment later he groaned as he rolled onto his back, stretching as he did so.

"A bed... finally..." He moaned, drawing out his half-whispered words in his boyish voice. "Too much stuff happened today... I need a break. I am beeeeat..."

He remained that way for a while; flopping about every now and then despite his earlier complaints of being exhausted. He continued to do so for a little while before he stopped short, reaching up to the lamp's switch and turned the light off, making the room go dark.

There was a little shuffling after that, but she didn't really notice.

What was he doing? Why did he lie about their names to that man? There had to have been some sort of reason for why he did that. He always had a reason for why he did things. With everything that had happened today- waking up to that bloody mess in her house, finding him barely conscious, going to the hospital, leaving in that strange way, returning to her house to see it as a crime scene, not being able to stay there, running from the police, going through that flaming corridor thing, coming to this place, having to stay at a motel under a different name- she was just overwhelmed.

She didn't know anything.

She _never_ knew anything.

It was always like this. Always; it was always like this. She never knew anything. She never knew anything about anything. Everything happened around her, and she was always stuck in the dark. She never knew what was going to come next, what was happening, or not even what had happened in the first place.

She didn't know anything at all. She didn't know who Demyx was; she didn't know where Demyx had come from; she didn't know what had happened to him when he had gotten beat up; she didn't know why that had happened to him; she didn't know why her own home was in shambles; she didn't know why her home was a crime scene; she didn't even know the reason for why Demyx had held her hostage instead of just killing her.

She didn't know anything.

She felt like crying, or maybe even screaming.

She didn't know anything.

"Heather?" Demyx asked quietly.

His words snapped her out of her bewildered thoughts, and she looked at the bed he was laying on, suddenly remembering that he was actually there. She stared at the spot where he had to have been laying, unable to see him in the darkness. She had been so distracted with her thoughts that she had zoned everything around her out. When did he turn off the lights?

That was another question with an answer she didn't know.

She heard the bed creaking, which almost prevented her from immersing into her thoughts all over again. The emotions behind her emotions were too strong for her to ignore. She really didn't know anything. There was just so much to know, and she didn't know any of it. What did she know? Nothing; she knew absolutely nothing.

Was this whole thing even happening? Was this all just a dream? She wanted it to be a dream. She wanted it all to be fake, and to be able to wake up at any given moment. In a dream, it was normal to not know what was happening. It was how the majority of her dreams worked. It was alright to go with the flow in dreams, because you generally didn't know anything else in the first place. She desperately wanted this to be a dream. If it was a dream then she would know everything she had to know.

If this were a dream, she wouldn't have all of these unbearable questions.

"What are you doing, Heather? Aren't you tired anymore?"

With his words stirring her conscious, she realized that she had dropped to the floor without her realizing it. She remembered doing so a minute ago, but only foggily as her thoughts had made her forget doing so. Blinking rapidly, she lightly squeezed the carpet fibers inside of her palm, loosing herself once again to her emotions.

She couldn't take it anymore. She just couldn't handle it anymore.

She started to cry.

Her sobs were muffled, only due to the fact that she didn't open her mouth as she did so. Unable to hold herself up anymore, she fell to the floor beneath her, and didn't bother to get back up as she continued to cry.

She had cried the day before because her house was ruined. It wasn't just her house; it was her home. It was her poor, ruined home. She hated this. She hated what was happening to her. Right now, she should be at home, letting the days pass by knitting, spending time practicing, or by going out to places with her friends. She should be asleep in her own bed, in her own house, and in her own town. It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be like this, but it was; it was and she hated it.

A part of her wondered why it was only hitting her like this now. Another part of her already knew, and that was one of the only things she knew. When she was in that chair she was blocking everything out. She couldn't accept what was happening to her, and she simply didn't. Only now, only now when there was nothing to distract her from the entire situation was she finally accepting the horrible truth.

She really didn't know anything. She didn't know anything, and she couldn't do anything. She had no control over what was happening to her in her life. All of it was controlled by someone, and that someone wasn't her. She couldn't decide when she would do something. She couldn't decide how she would do something, or where she would be. She couldn't decide who she would be around. She couldn't decide what would happen to her. She didn't even know why this was happening to her.

Why couldn't this be just a bad dream; a really bad dream?

For a moment, she thought she heard a sigh. A moment later, she realized that she did hear a sigh, because she heard Demyx crouch down next to her. She continued to cry, too emotional to be significantly bothered by his presence.

"Heather..." He whispered in his boyish tone, trailing off for a moment as she didn't so much as slow down. "C'mon, Heather... It's okay... uh..."

She continued on, doing her best to act like she didn't notice him. In fact, that was half-true. She just barely noticed him a second ago, and that was because he spoke to her. Instead, she just continued to cry, only somewhat listening to his movements. She heard the shuffling of his coat, but the sound of it seemed off. It sounded very close to her, but she knew that he wasn't that close to her. Why did the coat sound like it was right next to her skin if he wasn't that close to her?

In a moment, she remembered that she was wearing the coat. She hiccupped, surprised.

She had gotten so used to him wearing it that she had associated the sound of it with him. She knew that she was wearing the coat. She had been wearing it the entire time. It was on top of her body and shadowing her face; how could she not notice that she was wearing it?

He stirred out of her wandering thoughts when she heard him sigh. The floor creaked some, and she froze when she felt his hands on her. He put his hands underneath her arms and slowly lifted her up. He eased her up until she was standing, and then when she was he moved himself so that his right arm was supporting her as she wobbly stood in place, a weeping mess. He started to move her in the dark, as she did not move besides shuffling her feet whenever necessary, and in a moment he had her standing in place facing him with his hands on her shoulders. He steadily pushed her onto one of the beds, she wasn't really sure which one, and moved her so she laid down on it.

Once she was down, he gradually removed the boots she was wearing, and she could hear them being set onto the ground with a gentle clunk. Next, she felt him grab his coat's zipper. She instantly flinched when he did so, and he seemed to freeze. His hands remained there for a moment before he sighed again, and started to pull the blanket from underneath of her up. He placed the blanket over her, and then she heard him shuffle. With the following creaking sound she heard she thought that he must've been laying down himself.

It was silent. All the noise that was there was the occasional gust of wind, and a tree rattling. It remained that way for quite some time, and she felt herself start to doze off. She was so tired that she couldn't even move. In the silence, she eventually stopped crying, but she did nothing to wipe the tears off of her face. She felt too stunned to do anything.

"Hey Heather…" Demyx whispered.

He didn't whisper anything else, so she assumed that he was waiting for a reply. She didn't give him one. She just couldn't talk right now.

"…alright. Well... how about we go around the town tomorrow?" He asked quietly, startling her. "We can see what kind of things they have to do around here. We can just hang out tomorrow; just to relax a little. Would you like that?"

He remained silent, probably waiting for her to reply. After a moment he sighed, and started to move around on his bed. Once he was sufficiently comfortable she heard him lay down on the squeaking bed, and then she heard what had to be him fluffing his pillow.

"Okay." She whispered back, her voice barely audible.

For a second, she thought that he didn't hear her. However, right before sleep overtook her, she heard him laugh.

* * *

><p>All Heather could see was the sky. It only had a few clouds scattered through it, and those clouds seemed to perfectly blend with the natural darkness. Even though this was a sky, there weren't any stars visible in it. For some reason though, she felt that maybe it wasn't supposed to have stars in it in the first place. If it did have stars in it at some point then she was probably just imagining it. Stars were connected, and this place was not connected.<p>

She didn't know why, but she didn't care about the reason for why she felt that.

The sound of footprints echoed in the air, the only noise at all. She didn't care about that either. It just seemed natural for there to be footsteps in this place. It was odder than the sky being so dark, but it was still a normal occurrence, even if it felt like it was a bit of a rare one.

The sound of the footsteps drew closer, and it stopped when it was right next to her. She rolled her head to face the source of the noise without any sort of fear, as this was something she felt wasn't strange.

There was a blur there. She looked at it as if were something she normally saw, but she didn't really see it at all. The black blur nearly matched the black flooring beneath of it, almost like it was a part of it, but that couldn't be true since the floor beneath of it was lighter than it. Only now did she dully note that the floor was lighter than it had been before, being a tint of black instead of being a shade of it like it was before. Out of everything on this floor, she stood out the most, as she was the only thing that was really colored. Further down this pillar was another pillar that had a pale image of her on it, but she was much more colorful than it as the stained glass the image of herself was imprinted upon was starting to grey in some places.

"You are not supposed to be here."

She knew the voice. It was as ambiguous as it was emotionless, which made it hard to really grasp it, but she had heard it somewhere before. She didn't know where, but even as she started to care about her surroundings, she felt as if now wasn't the time she should wonder about that.

"Where am I supposed to be then?" She asked cautiously. She was only slightly afraid of the voice unlike many other things. To her, she had a feeling that it wasn't going to pointlessly cause her harm unless she gave it a real reason to. She didn't know why.

"You are supposed to be where you belong."

The voice's choice of words made it sound very vague, yet it was somehow direct. She felt as if this wasn't odd in anyway. It just seemed natural that it was like that, but she didn't know why.

"No, um, where am I supposed to be, as in, what location am I supposed to be at?" She asked the voice, only faltering for a moment as she looked at the blob-like blur in the hopes of getting her answer.

The voice did not respond. However, a part of the blur separated itself from its original place on the whole, in a shape that was almost like an arm, only too thin to be one. The tip of this extension moved so that it pointed away from the pillar she was on at the moment, and she noticed that it pointed to the lower pillar that had her image on it.

She was supposed to be down there?

Before she could ask the blur to confirm her thoughts, there was a swishing sound. It reminded her of the sound something would make as it was being whipped in the air, like a sheet of paper would, but only louder. She turned away from the blob and saw that rising from the dark floor was another blob. Unlike the blob that was apparently talking to her however, this one was not in the shape of a blob for very long, as it steadily morphed into a somewhat humanoid shape. It had two small arms that ended as hands with three claws, and it had two small legs without any visible toes. Its main body was very simple, just an oval-like shape that held the pieces of its body together. It had a spherical head with two warped antennae coming out of it instead of ears, and had these ominous yellow glowing eyes. It looked directly at her, walking side to side where it stood.

She looked at the creature, and she instantly felt panicked. The blur was away from her side instantly and it rushed towards the dark creature. It was hard to tell what the blur was doing, but she could foggily tell that the appendage it had used to point out the other pillar was now being used to strike at the black creature. The black creature did its best to avoid the blows being delivered, but when it finally got hit it burst into a black mist that quickly dissipated into the air thereafter.

The blur stood in place after the creature vanished and the appendage it had used to attack the creature retreated back into the spot it had been in before it had separated, going back in place as if it was never gone. The panic she felt easily dissipated as well, and the calmness she had felt before returned.

Moments passed by, but the blur continued to stand in place. From the way it was facing the monstrous creature a moment ago she could tell that the blur wasn't facing her, but rather had its right side to her. She wasn't sure if blurs actually had sides, but for simplicity's sake, she thought of the blur as if it did. She felt pretty certain that it had sides anyhow.

The area started to become blurry. Not blurry as if she weren't seeing very well, but blurry as if the air was somehow starting to become… unclear. It was as if something was starting to engulf the air, leaving it indistinguishable to her. She had no idea how that was even possible. The blurring was nothing like snow blowing in a blizzard, and it wasn't like a downpour of rain either. Those were the only two things she could think of that were even remotely similar to this, but whatever was happening wasn't either of them. She had no idea what could be happening to the air if it wasn't being afflicted by either of these two things. She didn't know any other sort of weather that could be causing this.

With the world blurring around her, she was only barely able to register that the blur had spoken again. She couldn't make out what it said. The world suddenly started to swish about somehow, dizzying her. She normally would have felt confused with such an occurrence, but she felt nothing; feeling nothing besides feeling as if this was normal. As per normal, the world had become completely blurred. The swishing continued, and now she could hear the sounds it made as it did so. The source of this all engulfed her as well, and she felt her feet leave the floor. The blur stood there, practically attached to the floor of the dark pillar as she floated up in the water. Indifferently, she continued watching the pillars beneath her vanish into the distance as she rose, leaving her all alone in the swirling current.

* * *

><p>Heather felt light on her eyelids. She squeezed her eyelids tighter and vainly tried to turn away from the light. However, wherever she turned the light still seemed to land on her eyes, and eventually, she opened them.<p>

The motel room was dimly lit, making everything in it seem darker in color than in regular light. The window was the source of the light; the light of the sun managed to squeeze in between the tiny gaps of the blinds and gave room a little bit of color. She found that she was laying on the bed closest to the window.

She sat up, the somewhat stylish bed comforter on top of her dropping into her lap as she did so. She blinked blearily as she looked around herself, slowly taking everything around her in.

What had she just dreamed of?

She continued to think about it as she rubbed at her fuzzy eye. She had never really had any oddball dreams before. Sure, she had dreams, but she had never had anything more than a repeat of the things she had experienced on that particular day in them. She had heard of people having very wacky dreams before, ones that involve things like flying pigs, but she had personally never experienced any dreams like that. The weirdest thing she had ever dreamt was that the boogeyman was marrying her mother, and that was because that dream was a retelling of some really strange romantic movie she had watched at a friend's house that day. Compared to other dreams, that dream wasn't all that strange, so she had never really had a dream about anything bizarre before. Having bizarre dreams wasn't something she experienced. Why was she suddenly having weirdo dreams about- about…

She just forgot what she had dreamed about.

She wasn't going to be remembering whatever odd thing she had dreamt of now. She sighed, turning her head downwards, and decided to forget about it. She was notorious for forgetting dreams, and she had been more so recently. It probably wasn't very important anyway.

She refocused on looking around her rather than thinking, and realized that she was still wearing Demyx's coat. She wondered why that was for a moment before she recalled what had happened last night, and quickly decided to ignore that. What happened last night was not something that she wanted to think about, and it was most certainly not something that she would want to think about first thing in the morning.

"Hmm? Oh, you're awake now." She heard Demyx say from the kitchenette. She couldn't see in to it from her spot on the bed. "That's good! I just got my hair the way I like it. Now you can see it!"

She looked over to the kitchenette entryway and stared at it, waiting for him to appear. He had mentioned his hair before, and she was actually a bit curious as to what he was talking about. The man had pouted about his hair, after all.

She heard him set something down in the kitchenette before she heard him move again, and when he did he sloppily slid across the carpeted floor on his socks into her view.

His hair was indeed styled differently. Instead of just leaving his hair down, he had the majority of his hair spiking up into the air. Looking at him, she could see the spots from where the elevated hair had come from on either side of his head and he had the hair underneath of those spots laying on his shoulders. Having given her a moment to look him over he twirled in place, letting her see that he had moved his hair so it spiked backwards, and he spun back around. Some of his hair fell into his face like it did before, which reminded her of bangs.

"See? Isn't this awesome?" He asked, waving a hand at his unique mullet hairstyle.

She nodded in response, and he grinned at her. She hadn't ever seen a hairstyle like it before. It was sort of cool.

"I told you it was! Well, anyway, do you want to get going now? We can go get something for breakfast while we're out." He said.

She looked down at herself, his coat still on her, and slowly nodded. She started to get off of the bed, and once she was up she started to clean it up. She heard him walk over into the direction of the door. When she looked up at some point, she saw him watching her, waiting. She quickly finished making the bed and walked over to him. He smiled, opening the door and gesturing for her to go through it. She did so and he followed suit, shutting the door behind him. He started walking down the hall and she followed him, occasionally walking by his side.

They went down the staircase and into the lobby. The man from yesterday, Tom if she remembered correctly, was behind the desk again but he was too busy at the moment to notice them. They left the motel, starting to walk further into town.

The town was a lot livelier mid-morning than in the very wee hours of the morning. Cars went by on the street, people walking along the sidewalks just like them. Lights were visible from inside buildings, and the birds chirped from in the trees that they passed on their trek. As they went further into the town the more intricate the buildings became. The ones on the edge of town were large, basic, but the buildings more on the inside were more unique in design. Music played from somewhere, similar to her hometown, giving the area a sort of homey feeling to her.

"Uhm…" Heather started, catching Demyx's attention as they continued on.

"Yes?" He asked simply, looking at her as she awkwardly avoided eye contact.

"Where are we?" She asked, distractedly toying with the chains on her chest to avoid having to look at him. She didn't know what this place was, but she wasn't confident enough to ask him about it yesterday.

"Uh…" He started, putting his hand on his chin. "I think this place is called… corner-something. Yeah, that's it. This place is Corner Town! Nice place isn't it?"

She didn't know of any place named Corner Town, so she didn't know where they were in relation to her house.

She nodded in response to his question, letting the hood on her head drop on accident. He made a curious noise as it revealed her head, but otherwise did nothing. The hood dropping bothered her because she had to look at him more now, but for some reason, she just didn't like having this coat on. The coat still felt wrong.

"Ah- look at that." Demyx said, pointing towards a sign in front of them. He walked over to it, her trailing alongside him, and read the sign. "There's a café around here. According to this it should be around the corner there. I'm pretty hungry. Let's go."

She nodded again in response to his enthusiastic comment, and they started to walk to the end of the sidewalk they were on. She was rather hungry, too. The end of the sidewalk was an intersection, having a path for people to walk across the street both straight ahead and to the right. According to the sign, the café was to the left further down the sidewalk they were on. They walked past the stores on this path, and neared the turn to the left. Just as they made the turn to the left, she walked right into someone.

She stumbled backwards, regaining her balance only a moment later. Surprised, she looked up to see the face of a young man with brownish hair looking down at her with an expression akin to surprise. Demyx looked in between the two of them, only showing his surprise by making a curious noise in the back of his throat. As the man looked at her, that surprise somehow seemed to morph into shock as he started to stare. Just as she was about to open her mouth to apologize to the man in front of her, a laughing voice interrupted her.

"Hey dude, are you alright? You need to watch where you're going more often, or one of these days you're going to walk right into a sinkhole rather than a…"

The voice trailed off, and she looked over to the owner of it, somehow feeling as if she recognized it. Once she saw the man that had spoken she froze, and she stared at his face. Bright brown eyes looked back at her, just as wide as hers. The owner of these eyes started to speak again, only to her instead of his friend. She knew him. She stared at him, the very last person she had expected to see today.

"Aria?"


	11. To Name

Heather didn't answer the question she was asked. She just stared at the person who asked it as an image went through her head.

In front of her were not the streets of Corner Town. Instead, there was a wall around her. From what she could tell, the walls were put together in the shape of a box. They had windowless holes in them which revealed the bright blue sky outside of the walls that mirrored the sky above. Straight ahead of her was a building of the likes she had never seen. It had an elegant double doorway beyond a small staircase that had sophisticated marble columns holding the roof over top of it. Next to those columns were two gargantuan golden statues of what appeared to be warriors leaning towards the door, showing their faces to people in front of the building, crossing swords with each other over the classy patterned roof. On either side of her were giant containers of some sort that held currently burning flames, and standing in between these two containers, only a few inches away from her, were two people wearing black coats.

She didn't recognize the person on her right. He appeared to be a teenager, only a couple of inches shorter than her. He had bright blonde hair that was very curly in texture, and it appeared to tip on the upper right side of his head in the air. He seemed to be wearing an identical uniform to the man next to him, but there were a few small differences. For one, his shoes seemed to be shaped differently than the man's, and for two his coat was devoid of the notable shoulder pads that the man next to him had in his.

She recognized the person on her left however. He had dirty blonde hair that was, judging by the back of his head, styled in a mullet. He was a bit skinny, but not all that lanky. He had a familiar relaxed aura around him even though his posture suggested that he was alert. He stood up straight, staring straight ahead of him, and his fingers were outspread even though his hands were resting at his sides. That person she recognized as Demyx.

Then it all went away and she was staring once again at the black haired, brown eyed man that was gawking at her. She snapped out of her trance, immediately recognizing the man in front of her.

She could barely believe her eyes.

She hadn't ever thought that she would run into someone she knew while she was with Demyx. It was the furthest thing from her mind, and even if she did think at some point that she might encounter someone she knew she never would have thought that she would run into him of all of the people she knew.

The object of her thoughts merely stared back at her, shock obvious on his face. It took a moment, a slim moment, but the smile he had on his face when he was talking to his friend a moment ago returned. He quickly walked over to her and grabbed her, pulling her into a rather rough bear hug. She heard Demyx jump back with a yelp, and the young man she had bumped into also seemed to startle at his friend's sudden movements.

"It really is you, Aria!" He removed his head from his tight embrace to say that, a smile showing on his face, and he removed her from his grasp to stand back in front of her. "What are you doing here? I didn't know that you were already living on your own. I thought you were still staying at home for a while."

She just started at the man in front of her, flat out speechless.

"You two know each other?" Demyx asked, looking between the two of them curiously.

"Uhm…" She started, realizing that she had to answer his question. "This is-"

"I'm Brio!" The man newly dubbed Brio cheerfully interrupted her, something that she knew was typical of him. He turned to face Demyx as he pulled Heather into another hug, only into his side this time rather than into his arms. "_I_ am little Aria here's awesome big brother. Now, who are you?"

"I'm Demyx." Demyx replied pleasantly, waving a hand in front of his face before he waved it over into her direction. "I'm a friend of… hers."

"Nice to meet you, man! Any friend of Aria's is a friend of mine." Brio declared, grinning all the while. He turned his head to face his friend, his short black hair whipping a little bit, and spoke to him. "Hey, go on ahead. I'll be over there in a bit."

Brio's friend nodded his head, and without any further ado, he continued walking again, heading down the path that she had just come from with Demyx. She thought she saw a flash of black from behind a building, but it vanished from her vision. Before she could wonder about where the man was going exactly she was interrupted once again, only this time being interrupted in her thoughts instead of being interrupted in her speaking like she was a moment ago.

"So what are you doing here, Aria?" Brio asked energetically, letting go of her in order to see her face as he spoke. "Why the sudden change of plans? I thought that you weren't moving until you started another school. Are you going to school here, or do you have a job already? I thought that you were waiting a year before you started school again, but if you are going to school, then where are you going? Are you living here now or something? Do you have an apartment here or a dorm? Do you rent a room somewhere? Wait, do you rent a house? I did the same thing in school, but wait, to do that you would need a job. Do you have a job?"

She stared at the man in front of her as he chattered on, coming up with questions as he went along, nibbling on her bottom lip.

What should she tell him? The first thought that popped into her head was that she couldn't tell him the truth. How was she supposed to tell someone that she was currently staying away from her home because she was tagging along with the man that had tied her up, held her hostage in her own home, and had essentially kidnapped her wanted to avoid getting near the police for some reason? She couldn't think of how to tell anyone that, let alone her own brother. She didn't even really understand why they had come out here in the first place. She understood that the authorities probably figured out a lot of what had happened, but they couldn't have figured out anything bad about Demyx, right? She didn't know. She didn't even know what this was herself, so how was she supposed to tell someone else anything?

She had a feeling that telling anyone about what was happening wasn't exactly a good idea anyway.

"Uhm, n-no. I'm-I'm not living here, or doing anything like that. I'm..." She said, trying to think of something quickly. "I'm just staying away from home for a while. Since Mom and Dad are gone I figured I'd-"

"Mom and Dad are gone?" Brio asked, looking rather surprised. "Where are they?"

"Uhm, they won a trip to a tropical island for a couple of weeks." She started, suddenly remembering that he probably wouldn't have known about the trip that they were on.

"Really? Huh." He said, taking in this information indifferently, but still smiling. "So you're here to goof off until they get back or something? Better than staying at home with nothing to do, I guess. Did you hear about the awesome parties that they have on Around Street?"

She nodded her head in response, quite thankful that he wasn't asking for too many details on what was actually happening in her life or noticing how nervous she was.

"So… what are you doing here then?" She asked, trying to change the subject while at the same time curious as well. What were the odds of him being in the very same town that she was in with Demyx at the exact same time anyway?

"Oh yeah; I have this show to do here. It's nothing too big since this is just a town, but nothing boring. You know me; I'd never do something boring." He said. He notably perked up, as if he just realized something. "Hey, you should come, too! Shows like this are always a blast no matter what size they are, and I'd bet my wallet that you would have a great time! It'll start in a few days, so just ask anyone about it. I don't really remember anything specific other than that it's in the afternoon when people get off work, so I can't tell you anything besides that. My bad."

He looked like he was going to continue, but a ringing sound prevented him from doing so. With a blink, he dug his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a cellphone. He flipped it open, and read something before he flipped it back closed, returning it into his pocket.

"Bad news, Aria; I gotta' go now. I know it's only been a couple of minutes, but the crew needs me. There's some equipment that needs testing and they want me to be there. I told my friend that it'd be a while, but it looks like they all want me right now. Ugh. There is _always_ some sort of equipment that needs testing. You know, I barely get a minute to breathe sometimes, and whenever I tell my one friend that he just says that I get paid not to breathe. It was really good to see you, Aria, and seriously, come to my gig. It'll be a lot of fun!" He said, pulling her into another hug. She remained quiet, watching him as he let go of her and turned to Demyx, continuing to speak in his lively tone. "It was nice to meet you, too. See you guys later!"

He started to jog down the sidewalk that his friend had gone down a few minutes ago. He waved his arm up into the air as a way of saying goodbye, and she watched him as he quickly made his way down the path.

There was a flash of black from behind a streetlamp in the direction her brother was running in. It instantly reminded her of what she saw when his friend left a few minutes ago. She looked at where she had glimpsed the black spot, but saw nothing. She shrugged this off as her eyes playing tricks on her, and instead looked to watch her brother go off, watching him until he was out of sight. As he left, the lively atmosphere that his presence created diminished, and she was unprepared for the silence that now overtook her surroundings. Slowly, she looked away from the direction that her brother had run off to, and turned to face Demyx, unsure of what to say.

"Still wanna' go to that café now?" He asked after a moment of silence, now looking at her instead of at where Brio had gone.

She nodded, and in a moment, they were both walking across the sidewalk in the direction of their destination. Both of them remained silent. She didn't know why her current companion was silent, but she knew why she was quiet. She was stunned.

She couldn't believe what had just happened.

Throughout this entire ordeal she hadn't ever thought of her family. She couldn't think of a moment where she had just stopped thinking about the situation and just thought about her family. There probably wasn't a moment where she had thought of her family, and if she did, only in passing. She was so focused on all of her questions that she had completely forgotten about them. Everything that had been happening to her made her forget all about her parents. She knew that they were out on that trip, but she hadn't really acknowledged it. She didn't think about how long they had been gone. She didn't think about when they were getting to get back. All she really thought of was that they were gone.

When were they going to be back anyway? They were supposed to be coming back around the beginning of the new year, after the holidays passed. What day was today anyway? How long was it until the holidays? Did the holidays pass already? She had no way to be sure about the holidays passing besides asking someone, which would result in her getting nothing but an odd look, so she wasn't sure as to how to go about finding out if they had passed. Maybe she should just ask someone for the date?

"Okay, well, I gotta' admit, I have a couple of questions." Demyx said, stirring her out of her thoughts. She looked up at him to see him smiling sheepishly. "I can't help it- I'm curious."

"Oh, uhm, that's fine." She started, successfully keeping herself from stuttering. "There's nothing wrong with asking a few questions."

"So that guy was really your brother?" He asked, starting to wave his right hand. "Uh, just making sure. That guy does look a lot like you, but I just figured that I'd ask. He didn't really act that much like you."

"Yes; that was my older brother." Heather replied, nodding her head. "As for the way he acts, he's just always been like that."

Her brother had always been an optimistic person. He was confident in everything he did unless there was a very good reason not to be. Since he was so naturally confident he had never been the type to be scared stiff of simple things like the unknown. He was never the type to be bothered by danger, and instead he seemed to thrive in it. He was also never known for worrying about questions he would never get answers for. He was bold, joyful, and lighthearted.

Demyx looked at her curiously, making a little goofy humming noise before he nodded in agreement. That action made her think of the fact that he would often act a bit comically, even in a serious situation. His smile lost its sheepishness, and he continued on pleasantly.

"What did your brother mean when he was talking about going to his show? Is he a musician or something?" He asked.

"Oh. No, um, he's not a musician. He's a stuntman." She replied.

"A stuntman?" He asked in a shocked tone, stopping in place for a split second. He crossed his arms together, and he shuddered. "Geez… Sounds like a scary job. What does he do as a… stuntman?"

"Well he does stunts, and he…" She drifted off, trying to recall what the answer to that question was exactly. This wasn't something she really thought about often. "The last time I talked to him he told me that he was specializing in jumping stunts. Uhm… like jumping off of a high building with little chance of not getting hurt."

"That is a scary job." He said, clearly horrified. He started to shake, visibly perturbed and disgusted. "Why would he want a job like _that_? Uh n-no offense or anything."

She looked at him, suddenly confused. She had never heard him stutter before. Once again questions found their way to the frequently dumbfounded girl, and she did her very best to ignore them for the time being. She wanted to think about them, sure, but this wasn't the time.

"Well, I don't really know why exactly. He's just always liked those kind of things. I just think it's because he has fun doing them. I-I mean, he went to school for three years studying it, so he has to like it, at least…" She said, her thoughts focusing on the current topic once again.

He made an odd gasping sound in which he sounded like he was choking on something as he hiccupped, and he stopped walking. She stopped as well as she turned to him, surprised at his current behavior. He started to rub his covered arms like doing so would stop his shuddering, even though he probably wasn't all that cold. It may have been snowing a while ago, but this Corner Town wasn't very cold.

Why was he acting like this? She had never really seen him act so… bothered.

"Fun? They actually have a school for doing _stunts_?" He asked. She almost had the feeling that the question was supposed to be rhetorical, but his shock was quite apparent. What she really took note of was the way the he repeated the word fun, as if he didn't believe what he had heard.

"Well, um, they have some sort of training program." She said, trying to recall what her brother had told her. "To be permitted to do stunts you have to do some sort of training for a few years and get approval from the organization that allows the… professional stunts. You also have to specialize in the type of stunt you're doing in order to be legally allowed to do them. I think it's so that the people doing the stunts don't get hurt because they don't know what they're doing."

"Oh. That makes sense." He said. He removed his crossed arms, continuing on in a tone similar to a mutter. "Risking my head jumping off of buildings is _not_ exactly my idea of a fun time though…"

"Yeah…" She said. She turned away from where he stood and looked down at her feet. She frowned at them, and muttered to herself as well. "It isn't mine either."

She simply looked at her feet, feeling too troubled now to actually look at the man next to her.

This conversation was making her uncomfortable. The topic itself didn't really bother her all that much, but it didn't mean that she was completely comfortable talking about it. Even though she wasn't completely comfortable with it, the topic alone wasn't what was troubling her though.

What was really troubling her, however, were the questions that she was starting to think of. These questions she had were really starting to make her distraught, and she found that she couldn't really look at him without even more of them coming to mind. She didn't really like talking to him. The more she talked to him the more questions she thought of. Even though people said that talking to someone was one of the best ways to understand someone the more she talked to him the less she seemed to understand about him.

Why would he do this? Why he do that? Why was he like this? Why was he like that? She could ask herself that a million times over and she never seemed to know. In fact, she had been asking herself those questions more and more often. She didn't just seem like she didn't know anything, she really didn't know anything.

She really didn't like all of these questions she had.

She nibbled on her bottom lip, and turned to get a look at the object of her thoughts. Once she did so, she immediately realized that the man that she was now looking at was looking back at her. She quickly looked away from him; as if he couldn't see her if she couldn't see him.

"Uh, did you just say that you agree with me?" Demyx asked. He sounded rather curious, and at the same time, a little bit puzzled; only a little bit though.

"Uhm…" She started, looking back at him for a second before looking back in front of her, making sure to keep him in her peripheral vision. She hadn't meant for him to hear that. "Ye-yes."

He looked at her for a moment. Maybe he expected her to say something more, but that didn't seem to be the case. As she took a closer look at him, turning her head slightly, she could see that he appeared to be thinking about something. She wasn't exactly the best at reading him, but he never seemed too difficult to read.

"Was that a bad topic to bring up or something?" He asked, rubbing the back of his neck with his gloved hand.

"N-no. It's not really a bad topic." She started, taking a moment to bite on her lips, a little bit lighter than usual. "There was just a little bit of an issue with this, is all. My parents didn't really approve of him doing this, since he's pretty much just gambling with his life. I remember that they told him that he shouldn't do this, and that he should do something else with his life… Well, he disagreed. He and my dad had a little bit of falling out after that. My dad really didn't want him to do this, and neither did my mom. My brother on the other hand, well, doing stunts for a living was pretty much my brother's dream life."

She paused, seeing the man she was speaking to shift on his feet. He started to walk forward, into the direction that they were going in before they started to talk, and she quickly followed him. She didn't really know why, but she felt a bit compelled to continue on, no longer interrupted. It gave her a new question, but she didn't really pay attention to it at the moment.

"My brother wound up moving to the city to study a bit after he finished school at home. It's not that this is some big, bitter family problem, but at this point it's just a little bit… awkward to talk about. Nothing too awkward really, since it's not like anyone's really mad about it at this point, but it's a bit of an… elephant in the room sort of thing. My brother's really pretty happy with his life now, so I suppose that's what really matters. We get together for some special occasions, so he's not really estranged. The whole thing is just fading away really…" She trailed off.

She blinked her eyes together, the light of a passing car startling her, and froze in surprise. Demyx stopped and looked at her as she did so, a slightly surprised look on his face. She quickly continued walking, and once she walked up to him, she started to as well. After a few moments, she found herself starting to speak again as she thought of something.

"There is one thing though. I think my brother got mad about something at some point though, since he started to refer to everyone the old way and hasn't stopped yet. It's fine with people that don't realize that he's doing it, but he makes people that realize that he's doing it uncomfortable, since the old way is just so controversial…" She said, trailing off as she started to run out of things to say on the matter, and as she started to recognize what matter she was talking about exactly.

Maybe she shouldn't be talking about this.

It wasn't that she was uncomfortable talking about this, it was more that she was uncomfortable talking to the person she was telling this to than simply talking about it.

It did seem more than a little bit odd that she was telling all of this personal information to the man that forcibly held her captive for a rather long period of time, and was arguably still holding her hostage.

It was just odd talking to him; talking to him in general was odd. It normally made her a bit nervous to talk to him because of their current situation, but whenever he didn't speak it was different. When he didn't reply to whatever she said, it felt almost like she was talking to herself. It was like when she spoke she wouldn't be receive any sort of negative, or even a positive response to what she would say. She was still speaking, but when she spoke to him when he was silent she didn't receive any sort of judgment for it.

It was almost like… she wasn't even talking to anyone.

A pain zipped through her head. It faded away very quickly, too quickly for her to register it in time to clutch at her head even, but it left a very notable impact. She nearly winced as her surroundings suddenly changed into a dark cave-like place. In front of her was Demyx, crouched down to the ground with his back up against the wall, blood smeared on his face.

"What's the old way?"

Her entire train of thought came to a screeching halt as he snapped her out of her reverie with words that she had never expected anyone his age to say.

She stared at him, mouth clearly agape as she tried to properly process what she had just heard. She stopped walking once again and just stared at him, barely registering that he stopped walking as well. The sentence that he had just said was the most shocking thing that she had encountered that day; not even running into her brother was as shocking as his words.

"What?" He asked, completely aware that she was staring at her like his entire body was on fire and he was doing nothing about it.

"You… you don't know?" She asked uncertainly, not really believing what she had just heard.

"No…" He drawled, his boyish tone sounding a little bit perplexed. "If I knew what it was then I wouldn't be asking you."

She stared at him, shock fading away as she started process what he had just said as the truth.

It was unthinkable.

She had never thought that anyone his age would ask that question. Sure, she could picture a child asking that question since they probably wouldn't know about it, but someone his age? He was older than her. If anything, he should know more about it than she did. She didn't know how old he was, but she figured that he was in his early twenties at least. With that boyish look of his he couldn't be all that old, but with the more masculine features she had she knew that he wasn't a teenager. He should know about this. Everyone knew about this.

How could he not know about this?

"It's… the old way._ The_ old way. The way things were before the incident years ago. The way everything was before that incident." She said in disbelief.

"Not ringing any bells…" He said, rubbing at his chin. "What incident are you talking about?"

She continued to stare at him, very taken aback. She had never heard of someone not knowing about this. Maybe he was from a really far off place or something of the like. She instantly doubted that idea. Everyone in the world knew about the incident, and a really far off place was still a part of the world. That idea started another idea. Maybe he was a very far off and isolated place. If he was from an isolated place than maybe he wouldn't have taken part in the change. Plus, the incident happened a long time ago, so maybe he was still pretty young when it happened. Maybe it was something like that.

Heather continued to make ideas to herself as to why he claimed he didn't know what the incident was, and even though all of the ideas she came up with were decently unlikely, she still felt a little bit better with something that resembled a real answer than having no answer at all to her question.

The shock continually faded away, and reality started to awake her. All of the ideas she had come up with as to why he was asking her this came to her very quickly, and they left her just as quickly. What he was asking her may have been very odd, but she didn't want to dwell on it. It was something that created a lot of questions, and at this point, she wanted nothing to do with questions.

Her questions were causing her more grief than what they were worth.

"The incident... the incident was happened about twenty years ago." She started to explain. "I don't know a lot of the details, so I can't tell you why it happened, how it happened, or anything like that. All I can really tell you for sure is that it ended around seventeen years ago, which is why I don't really know much about it since I was just a baby at the time... All I know is that something bad happened during those few years it happened; something very, very bad."

"Something bad happened?" He asked, tilting his head. "Like what?"

"I… I don't know. It's just… well…" She responded, looking away from him and around the area, realizing that they were the only ones there. Then she continued on in a hushed voice. "Well whatever happened was worse than that time when the world was destroyed two years ago. The incident from back then is even more taboo to mention than that, and to this day no one even knows how the world was destroyed in the first place."

Demyx nodded in response, and then mentioned rather airily. "The world came back together again around a year ago, right?"

She nodded inattentively to his probably rhetorical question, instead focused on continuing her explanation to his question. She figured that if he didn't know anything about it he would be confused if she just explained the basics, but she didn't know how to explain it in detail.

"Things were really different back then, from what I know. Back then everything was different; um, the culture I mean. Everyone loved the way that they lived back then, but whenever that incident started all of that just changed. Like I said, something really bad happened during the incident. The incident is just called that; an incident. No one really says it, since it's not something people talk about, but the whole thing was actually a debacle…" She trailed off, starting to get lost in her thoughts as she rambled about something she thought just about everyone knew.

She looked at him, questions plaguing at her. Everyone here knew this, but he seemed to be taking it as if he had never heard it before. She had learned the all of what she knew about it from her parents, and they didn't seem to know all that much about it in the first place. What she was saying were really the bare basics of the topic, but it still seemed like all of what she said was news to him.

Sure, this was a rather secretive topic that people only really knew what they had experienced, but everyone knew at least something. The people that actually really knew what had happened would never say anything about it, and that was the same for anyone that knew even a little bit about it. The topic was only mentioned in passing to tell people, mainly children, that didn't know about it that it had happened. That was it. It was never mentioned in detail. People really hated to talk about it, and it was avoiding like it was a plague. With everyone being silent about it, no one really knew why or how it had happened.

If the man in front of her didn't know about it, then that meant no one told him about it. That thought stunned her.

She wanted to wonder why he didn't know about even more now, but she worked to prevent herself from doing so. If she continued to think like this then she would be thinking about a question that she would never figure out an answer for, and at the same time she would think of even more questions that wouldn't have answers. It was a cycle now. She thought of a question, didn't get answer, thought of another question, didn't get an answer, and then the cycle would just continue on.

Heather really didn't want to keep going through this cycle anymore. She was just sick of these questions.

He must've been very sheltered in his early life if he didn't know about it. That's what she decided. There weren't any more details to the answer than that, and there weren't any less details either.

She focused on looking around herself, to get a look at her surroundings. She noticed that the man that she was thinking about was looking at her rather curiously. She jumped in response, and couldn't keep herself from yelping. He recoiled with his own cry, his right arm protectively hovering over both his chest and face.

She looked down the ground out of discomfort, and bit at her lower lip. She quickly continued speaking, not wanting this moment to drawl out.

"Well… whenever what happened during the incident finally finished a few years after it started everyone decided to change everything. Uhm… I don't really know why people decided to do it; they were really were happy before, from what I've been told. Apparently, they had a very important reason for doing that though. I just don't know what." She said.

She turned herself, and managed to look at his feet as she continued on. It was nothing much, but Demyx made a little inquisitive noise as she did so.

"After the incident people just started to modify everything. Uhm, not really change it, but more like they were trying to redo everything that was already there. All of the buildings were remodeled, a lot of the towns were merged together, and even the government system was changed. After that was done, they started to rename everything. The renamed the towns, they renamed the landmarks, and people even renamed themselves. Suddenly everything was completely different from before the incident happened. That's what the old way refers to; the old way that people had acted before the incident." She explained, looking back to him as she finished.

He nodded once again and made a little humming noise, as if he was confirming that he had heard her.

"So the old way is the way that things were back then before the incident?" He asked, but he seemed to know the answer to that question. A second afterwards he perked up, seemingly realizing something, and continued on in his easy-going tone. "Oh! So that's why he was calling you Aria so much, right?"

"Yes." She said. "Since I was born before the incident ended I had a different name than I do now. Before the incident, there was some sort of theme for naming people. I don't know what it is though. A lot of people choose to come up with new names to use instead of the traditional ones after it all ended, but some other people kept their original names. That's why speaking the old way is controversial, since no one really came to an agreement on what was really the right thing to do. My parents were on the renaming side of the debate like most people, so that's why I was renamed Heather from Aria… that's why my brother was renamed, too, since he was a couple of years old by the time it ended. Brio is just the name that he had before the incident; his real name that my parents made for him is actually Heath. For whatever reason, he decided to go by Brio after he left home."

Once again, Demyx nodded in response, and he made another humming sound. She looked at his face for a moment, wondering if she could ask him the question on her mind, and nibbled on her lip.

"Well I guess my questions are answered. Let's go that café place now; I'm hungry." He said, starting to walk forward.

"Uhm…" She started, still standing in place.

Hearing the noise she made, he stopped walking and turned to face her, curiosity etched onto his face. She nibbled harder on her lip, and averted her eyes. After a moment, she looked back to him and continued on with what she wanted to say.

"What was your name before the incident? I mean, uhm, I told you mine, and-and I'm curious about yours…" She trailed off, the sudden boost of confidence she had which let her speak fading away.

He didn't reply. He just looked at her, his facial expression indecipherable. She looked down at his feet, tilting her head to the side so that she couldn't see them. She knew that he was still looking at her. She bit hard on her lip again, and tried to keep herself from thinking of anything that she shouldn't be thinking about. She felt uncomfortable when he was looking at her. She was fine with him looking at her when either of them was saying something, but that's the only time when she was at least a little bit comfortable with him looking at her.

Whenever there was nothing to do distract her from focusing on him when he was looking at her, she couldn't help but have this weird feeling that unsettled her.

Whenever he just looked at her, she felt as if she wasn't being looked at by a person.

She absently worried if she would cut herself from biting her lip at some point. It had probably happened before, and she wouldn't be surprised if she did. With that thought she stopped biting at her lip, instead focusing on her question. She had considered Demyx's name rather strange before mainly because it had a sound to it that was rather uncommon among the new names, and she was curious as to if his former name was as odd as his current one.

"Beats me." He said in a casual tone, making her startle slightly as she looked up at him. He shrugged his shoulders and continued. "I know what my name was before, but it doesn't really hold any sort of value to me now. I don't really know how I felt about that name before, but it doesn't really matter anyway since it's not my name anymore. I'm Demyx. I'm Nobody else."

She remained silent, taking in what he had said. What he had said was very simple, but for some reason, she felt like there was something more to what he had said than just that.

"Let's go. I am _really_ hungry now." He said, waving a hand for her to come over.

She nodded her head in response, and started to walk down the sidewalk again. She walked over to him, and with a hum, he started to walk down the sidewalk with her. He was still a bit faster than her, so she simply trailed behind him as they went along, looking at his back. They continued their small trek down the path for a few moments, her looking at his back and him leading the way, completely uninterrupted.

Suddenly the surrounding area changed. All of the buildings appeared to be several stories higher than they were a moment ago. Instead of being the multiple hues of brown that ranged from beige to russet that they were just a second ago they were all varying shades of black. The only sources of lighting now were the few lights that were on from inside of the buildings and the neon lit signs that were hanging on the sides of the skyscraper-like buildings. This entire area reminded her of a city. The ground underneath of her feet was no longer a sidewalk, but was instead a dark colored path that seemed to be quite wet, reminiscent of street pavement. In the air were dark clouds, clouds that were almost as dark as the buildings underneath of them. Long droplets of rain fell from those dark clouds up in the air and mercilessly slammed onto the ground, simply pouring down.

Even though it was apparently raining very hard, she couldn't hear a thing. She didn't hear any of those raindrops hit the ground. Even though they were hitting it so hard that they were bouncing a foot into the air before they fell back down again she somehow didn't hear even the slightest of sounds. She didn't feel a thing either. The rain droplets went through her, as if she wasn't even there.

In front of her Demyx was now wearing the coat that she was wearing at the moment, just without any of the holes it had on the moment on it. She could only tell it was him due to his body shape; his head was covered by his hood. His arms gently swung back and forth as he walked down the path like he had been a moment ago, very relaxed in his movements.

Just as she finished her quick skim of what the area looked like it turned back into what it was a moment ago. The buildings were their regular short sizes, the streetlight-lined sidewalk that they were walking on had a small layer of melting snow on it instead of pure water, and the pale morning sky was once again clear. Demyx continued to walk down the path back in the clothing he was in a moment ago, his head uncovered.

Heather nibbled on her lip and moved up in order to walk on Demyx's side, trying to ignore the odd urge to put a hand over her steadily beating heart.


	12. To Speak

They had been in Corner Town for a day now. After they had finished eating at the café yesterday they had walked around the town for a while, taking in the sights of the area.

This town reminded Heather of home.

She and Demyx had found that the music that was playing in the town was coming from the town's church. She rather enjoyed knowing this because the music reminded her of her hometown, which likewise would commonly have music playing in buildings that would echo throughout the town. Her home was on the outskirts of her hometown, so, unfortunately, the music never really carried over to it. It was always something she enjoyed though. Due to that hearing the music in this town comforted her a little bit, and she was happy that the music played was very similar to the music played in her hometown. While it was only similar to the music in her hometown it was actually almost identical to the music that played in the neighboring city of her hometown, the only difference being that the music here was a little bit higher in pitch.

She wondered about why that was for a little while before she reminded herself that thinking about a question, no matter how meager, was not something that would be good for her in the end.

She had learned that this Corner Town was a rather small place. For some reason Demyx was very good at picking up information, and because of that she now knew more about this town then what she would have known if she had just gone about learning about this town by herself.

In Corner Town there was generally only one of everything that was considered a necessity. Among the town there was only one school, a single grocery store, and only one church. According to what they had learned as they went about the town was that there was only a single school because there were only a handful of children. There were more adults than children, but there still weren't many of them either. With the low population of the town they really only needed a single store for people to get their supplies from, and anything more than that was really a waste of space. The church was apparently used more as a meeting hall rather than for anything else. People gathered there often for some events, especially around the holidays apparently, but it wasn't really used for much else besides discussions about the town.

This all made sense to her. It was really similar to the way her hometown worked, only that in her hometown there was more people. Most places worked exactly like this town; the only place she could think of that wasn't like that was the city near her home, To City, which didn't have any sort of residency. A lot of people from the world vanished when the world was restored after it was destroyed two years ago, and there weren't all that many people living in the world before that happened.

She remembered when that happened. She remembered when it had happened, but not what had happened. She had blocked out most of what had happened and she couldn't remember what happened. People didn't talk about it, so she knew even less about it.

It was one of those holes in her memory now; something she knew happened but something she couldn't remember happening.

"Oh that's wonderful!" She was stirred out of her thoughts somewhat by the words that came from the fruity voice of a decently aged man by the name of Tom, and she looked to the man who was at the moment speaking to a man a few decades younger than himself. "Is everything else going well for you?"

Demyx nodded in confirmation, his shortly styled hair slightly jolting in response.

"Yes. Our car has been towed to our relatives' house, and our relatives are coming to pick us up later tonight. Everything has been worked out." He said to the older man calmly, his tone uncharacteristically deep. He reached into his pant pocket and pulled out the keys to their motel room, presenting them to Tom. "Here are your keys back. Thank you for letting us stay here on such short notice, Mr. Senft."

"It was no problem at all." Tom said after he chortled in response, his voice grating as he finished. "I just need you to sign something really quick and then you're free to go. It's too bad that you won't be staying in town for the stunt show in a few days. I heard that it's really going to be something."

"It's alright. We might catch it on TV at some point." Demyx replied simply.

To the side, Heather half-watched as Demyx went about signing both of them out of the little motel, more entranced with her thoughts than what was happening around her. She didn't know why exactly they were leaving this area so quickly, but she didn't really question it. She was doing her very best not to question anything anymore, and so far she was succeeding.

Tom fished some keys out of his own pocket and moved them in front of him, presumably into the lock on the drawer in the tall desk he was standing behind. The keys clinked as he made them, and he made a confused noise as he continued to work with them. His relaxed facial expression morphed into confusion and after a moment it turned into exasperation.

"Liron." He said, having turned to face the door behind him. He was silent for a moment before he continued in a deeper tone. "Liron. Liron! Can you hear me? Liron, the old man's funky lock isn't opening again, and I need some papers that are in it!"

He moved towards the door behind him and raised his arm, looking as if he were about to start pounding on it. Just as he was about to do so the door in front of him opened to reveal an elderly man with whitening hair and deep, wrinkled skin.

"Liron's out at the moment, Tommy. Now, what was this about my_ funky_ lock?" The older man said in a raspy, cheerful voice, a voice which did not change as he spoke, but became deeper as he finished his sentence, a dangerous glint showing in the old man's serene appearing eyes.

"This." Tom said, pointing unceremoniously towards the desk. "_Funky_ lock won't open. Again."

"Oh really?" The older man asked innocently, looking towards the drawer.

"Yes. Really." Tom, the formerly pleasant man deadpanned, looking a bit more annoyed than he was a few moments ago.

"Hmm…" The older man hummed, moving towards the drawer. He started to look what was presumably the lock over, and continued to hum. As he continued his observations his hums became puzzled, understanding, curious, surprised, and many other random emotions that varied in feeling just as much as they varied in tone. With each hum he made, the less he seemed focused on actually looking at the lock than he was on humming around it.

"You can stop that any time now." Tom said, giving the older man a flat look.

"Stop what?" The older man asked as he turned back to face Tom.

"That humming, Tarana…" Tom said warningly, his expression becoming annoyed once more.

"Oh, I'm sorry. If you had a problem with it then you just should've said something earlier." The old man named Tarana replied calmly, and turned back to the drawer, which let Heather see his mischievous smirk.

She blinked from where she stood, a sight which remained unseen from underneath the hood of Demyx's coat. Tarana was an old way name. He must've been one of the people that didn't change their name after the incident. With the questioning nature she had recently developed she wondered what reason the elderly man had for keeping it, but she squished her curiosities down, trying to focus on something else.

Tom sighed and shook his head, catching her attention once more. He muttered something that she couldn't hear to himself as he looked at his hand for a second before he looked back to the older man in front of him.

"Hmm…" Tarana once again hummed, either not hearing or ignoring the annoyed grunt that Tom made as he looked at the lock once more. Suddenly, his face lit up in what appeared to be realization and he turned to look at the younger man behind him. "I know how to open this! In order to fix this lock so that you can open the drawer I need a special tool from far, far away. Getting this tool is most important, or else everything in this building shall become locked forever! Yes, yes if you do not get this item I will not be able to open the lock at all, and then everything else shall become locked. In order to obtain this tool, you must go on a perilous journey through the mountains, moving past the forest, travelling across the oceans beyond in a race towards-"

"Give me the keys." Tom said, cutting the older man off.

"What?" Tarana asked dumbly, turning his face towards the middle-aged man from his semi-crouched position.

"I know you have the keys, old man." Tom said bluntly.

"Excuse me?" Tarana asked, tilting his head ever so slightly in innocent confusion.

"The reason why these keys won't work on the lock is because they _aren't _the keys for the lock." Tom said as he extended his empty right hand towards the elderly man, having put the keys he had previously in his left. "Now, give me the keys, Tarana."

Tarana continued to look at Tom confusedly from his squatted position while Tom continued to hold his hand down expectantly, a deadpan look on his. After a few moments, Tarana grunted, reaching his left arm into the loose sleeve of his right and pulled something out of it. He threw a keychain at Tom, who simply reached up to catch the harshly thrown object in his hand, as if he had expected it.

"You're no fun." Tarana said bitterly, a contrast to the cheerful way he had been speaking for the last few moments. After a second he moodily turned his head to the side, and huffed for good measure.

"Why would you even want to steal your own darn keys?" Tom asked rhetorically as he shook his head once more, grumbling something under his breath that she barely caught. "Senile fool…"

He moved forward and scooted the older man away from the desk's side. Tarana made a startled sound as he was moved aside, and once he regained his balance, he glared at Tom's back as the younger man started to unlock the drawer now in front of him. For a brief second, she caught a glimpse of him sticking his tongue out. He stared at Tom's backs for a few more minutes as his head bobbed up and down, a pout on his face. Tom pulled a clipboard out and presented it to Demyx, along with a pen he produced from inside the drawer as well.

"Sorry about the wait, Mr. Thompson. Now, just sign your name here and then you can go." Tom said as he pointed to a particular square of a large table on the sheet of paper pulled up on the clipboard.

"It wasn't any sort of problem Mr. Senft." Demyx said in his deeper tone again after he nodded in reply and took the clipboard. She looked away from him to look in front of her. Tom unknowingly watched as Demyx signed what wasn't his name onto the paper, and Tarana seemed to be looking at Demyx. She looked confusedly at his face, taking note of his odd cynical expression.

As if sensing that he was being looked at, he turned to face her, his expression now reminding her of a searching look. She looked away from him uncomfortably back to Demyx, trying to focus on something besides the old man. Feeling as if he was still looking at her, she tried to subtly bite at any part of her lip that she could, hoping that he wouldn't see. Suddenly, she saw from the corner of her eye that he abruptly turned away from her, and looked back to Demyx as he handed the clipboard back to Tom.

Did he just shudder?

She turned her head towards him and stared at him, questions coming to her. She had been trying to avoid thinking of questions, but that was just odd. She saw him shudder. He did, just as he looked at her. What did that mean? Was he bothered by her for some reason? Was he cold? Maybe he was cold. It was rather chilly this morning, and the only reason she wasn't shivering herself was because of the coat she was wearing. Maybe he just shook from the cold. He was older too, so he would be even colder than her.

She noticed that Demyx turned to face her in her peripheral vision.

"Let's go, Rebecca." He said. He turned his head backwards and said. "Goodbye Mr. Senft."

"Goodbye Mr. Thompson; goodbye Mrs. Thompson. It was nice to meet you both." Tom said after he laughed, back into his good-natured mood once more. "Until we meet again."

Demyx took a hold of her hand and started to lead her away. Before she turned around to walk in the same direction as him, she caught a glimpse of the odd way that the old man named Tarana was looking at them. Noticing her gaze, the old man focused on her once again. His facial expression remained the same for a very brief moment before he smiled and waved at her. That was all that she managed to see before she started to walk with Demyx towards the door and out of the building.

The snow from the previous day had melted, staining the sidewalk and streets with water. The sky was once again devoid of any sort of clouds, and it was pale in the morning light. The man next to her shut the door, letting go of her hand in the process, and turned away from the door to look at her.

"Alright, Heather; we'll leave town and go further north." He said. "I thought this place would be a good pit stop before we really get moving, and it was. Now we're gonna' go up north towards another forested area and then I'll use a corridor to take us to another town for a while, okay?"

She nodded, confirming that she understood. He made a grunt-like noise before he continued speaking.

"Okay then! Off we go." He said cheerfully, starting to walk down the sidewalk that they were on.

She followed after him, staying by his side, only partially behind him.

What town were they going to?

She blinked her eyes, feeling some more troublesome thoughts coming to her, and tried to ignore them. She attempted to focus on where they were going, but with her having already become accustomed to being lead around by Demyx it was rather difficult to do so.

How did those corridor things work? What were those corridors?

Why were they even traveling to different towns anyway?

She looked away from her surroundings, deciding that it was a good idea to forgo trying to distract herself with something that wouldn't catch her attention, and looked towards Demyx, the original source of all of her questions.

Heather had never been a curious person. Sure, she had questions to things she didn't know about like any average person, but nothing beyond that. She had never been all that interested in the unknown, and she preferred just to go about life with the knowledge she needed to know. However, whenever she met Demyx that changed. She started to notice that things she would overlook before were more relevant to her than she thought. Whenever she found something relevant to her at that point she would find something else that she was interested in knowing, and then after that she would find something else somewhat relevant to her that she was interested in knowing.

She just had to know things. She had to know what happened around her more because everything that happened around her suddenly had something to do with her. Everything she had disregarded beforehand was now something that she needed to know. If she didn't know about something around her then she would become left in the dark. With one question came more questions, and with each question she didn't have answer to she would become even further left in the dark.

The world would be able to continue on without her, and if she didn't keep up, she felt as if it would really leave her behind.

With everything happening right now in her life it was easy for someone to become overwhelmed, and she was trying her best to avoid that. The best way to do that was to understand what was happening in her life, and she achieved that by asking questions. Asking questions was all she could do and she was willing to do it.

She wanted some control of her own life, after all.

"You're bizarre."

She looked around herself, making sure to continue walking with the man who she had unintentionally slightly drifted away from as she focused on her thoughts, searching for the person who said that. It wasn't Demyx that had said it, and it certainly wasn't her who had said it. She was able to tell that whoever said that was male. The voice was masculine in tone, but not terribly so. By the way it cracked it made her think that it was a teenager's voice, but she saw no teenage boy around her that could have made the odd comment. In fact, there wasn't anyone besides the two of them that were around. She looked to Demyx, wondering if he had said it. Maybe it was a new tone of his that she hadn't heard before.

She continued to look at him, figuring that if he said something then he would continue, but he made no comment. He continued to walk forward, leading her to whatever place that they were going to, as if she didn't hear what she just heard.

She bit her lip, steadily trying to convince herself that her ears were playing tricks on her. She wasn't hearing things. Her ears were just playing tricks on her. Who would make _that_ comment out of the blue like that, anyway?

She and Demyx continued to walk. They passed by a few areas that she had become familiar with in the town, and she could tell that they were going in the opposite direction from where they came. She tried again to focus on where they were going, but it was still difficult. All of those questions she had been trying to ignore were becoming harder to ignore as time went by. She wanted to know the answers to them. That's all she wanted. She just wanted to know what they were doing, why they were doing it, but she couldn't ask. She couldn't ask any of her questions no matter how badly she wanted to. It wasn't just that she was scared to ask them, it was now because she felt as if she didn't want to know the answer to them.

Why was Demyx doing this? Why was Demyx traveling across towns, and why was he taking her with him? What reason did he have for doing any of this?

"Hey Heather." Demyx said, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Yes?" She asked. It was becoming rather common for him to address her like that when he wanted to talk about something.

"Uh… thanks for fixing up my coat. I know you're wearing it and all, but uh… it's better now that it doesn't have a bunch of holes in it." Demyx said, waving his right hand in the air.

"You're welcome." She replied. At his comment she looked down at the coat she was wearing and took in the little strands of dark thread from where she had sewn holes back together.

She had woken up early that morning. When she had woken up, she had found that Demyx was still asleep, his loud snoring confirming it, so in order to keep herself preoccupied she looked around their motel room. She had found a little sewing box in a drawer in the kitchen, so she decided to fix the coat up while she was waiting for him to wake up. By the time that she was just finishing up the last hole in it she heard him stop his loud snoring, and after he finally willed himself to get up she already had the coat back on. They left the motel room to check out almost immediately after.

"Do you like music, Heather?" Demyx asked, looking back towards her.

"Huh?" She looked up from the coat and back over to him in surprise, being removed from her thoughts once again. He continued to look at her, and after chewing on the inside of her lip for a second, she replied. "Yes. I like music. Why do you ask?"

"Uh, well, I just happen to love music. I just was wondering how you felt about it. Do you love it, too?" Demyx asked, looking perkier than he was a moment ago.

Memories of her time spent at her local community center with her friends bombarded her, and many other memories of her time being around music came to her. Everything from hearing a chorus of many voices singing together echo about the walls of a large room in front of a large crowd to simply listening to the music that drifted throughout her hometown as she sat on a park bench came to her mind.

"Yes. I really do love music." She said. The memories that came to her started to overtake her mind, and she started to feel at ease.

She remembered listening to the music that would play on her father's radio when he put it on as he worked in the garage, listening to that one person in her classroom that would whistle the tune of the music that played in her hometown whenever the class was about to end, and listening to her mother humming a song that she didn't know whenever she was cooking. She remembered the old stereo that would play in the community center whenever the people in it weren't practicing and how it would occasionally block out the music playing outside. She even remembered a few times when she would be woken up way too early in the morning by her brother's horribly off-tune singing in the shower when he was a teenager.

"Really?" Demyx asked, perking up even more. He started to slow down to walk at her side. "Which do you like more- vocal or instrumental music?"

"Uhm…" She started. That was a tough question. She had to think about her answer for that one. "I don't actually play any instrument, but I like listening to instruments more. It's just a bit… different then hearing people."

A smile started to grow on his face. He shifted his shoulders a bit, standing up straighter than he was a moment ago before he spoke.

"Yeah, I feel the same way. I mean I can actually play an instrument, but I don't like them just because of that. I don't really like singing myself. It's not because I'm all that bad or anything; I just don't like to. I mean, to be honest, I can't really sing all that well, but that isn't the reason for why I don't like it. I like hearing other people singing, but I just prefer playing an instrument. It's just something I love to do." He said, looking at her with a calm smile on his face. "Hey, have you ever heard of an instrument called a sitar before?"

"Uhm…" She said, searching her memories for any mention of a musical instrument with that name. "No; I've never heard of a sitar before."

"Well, that's what I play." He said cheerfully. He looked in front of them for a moment to see where they were going before he looked back to her, continuing. "When we get the chance I'll show you what it looks like, and then I'll play it, too."

They reached the end of the sidewalk. Demyx looked either way before they started to walk across the road and onto the sidewalk on the other side.

"Do you do anything Heather?" He asked, looking down at her curiously.

In that moment she felt quite thankful for the hood on her head. A light blush spread across her face not due to embarrassment, but rather because she was surprised by the question. She wasn't used to speaking so intimately with anyone but her friends, let alone him. It was actually sort of… nice.

"Yes, actually… I used to sing." She replied.

"Used to?" He asked, blinking.

"I used to before… uhm… you…" She stuttered. She trailed off as she awkwardly looked to the side, not sure as to how to say that she had stopped singing at her community center because he was holding her hostage.

"Oh." He said simply, his smile falling off his face. He started to smile again, and continued on in a way that sounded like he was trying to keep the conversation cheerful. "Well, then what did you sing?"

"I was in a choir, so I would usually sing the choral songs." She said, the touchy feelings that she had with the topic a second ago dying away.

"Hmm…" He made the sound pleasantly with a smile, as if he was starting to think of something. Suddenly, he lit up and he turned to face her, walking sideways to keep moving with her. "I know what! Hey, Heather, start singing!"

She stopped in place, turning her body to face him, and simply stared at him. He stopped walking in turn and continued to smile at her.

"What?" She asked, dumbfounded.

"Start singing!" He said excitedly, jumbling about as he started to make the rapid gestures that he thought to do. "C'mon! Haven't you ever had the urge to do something stupid… and completely awesome! Just start singing, and it'll be a lot of fun!"

"What?" She asked again, this time a bit more shrill in tone as she started to laugh in bafflement. Despite how hard she was starting to laugh at his words, she started to speak, stumbling over her words as she laughed. "I can't do that! I mean, this is a sidewalk, in the middle of a town- who would start to sing choir music of all things in the middle of a- I mean I just, can't, do, that!"

Heather couldn't continue to argue her point any more. She just burst out laughing, and held her chest in a slight bit of pain as she became beside herself with laughter at the idea. Demyx started to laugh himself and for a few minutes they just continued to laugh. As they were laughing, she heard him use a deeper tone of voice, not as deep as the one he was using as he was talking to the people at The Rut, but not as high as that boyish one he often used around her. She didn't really focus on that though. She didn't even need to try to keep herself from questioning it. She didn't know about him, but she just couldn't stop laughing. It was just too funny. Why would he even suggest something so silly?

"Who is this kook?"

She stopped laughing, standing shocked. Demyx continued to laugh, unaware of her sudden stopping. She looked around herself for the source of the voice, wondering who it could be.

It was that same voice from a little while ago. She had forgotten all about what she had heard as they were walking earlier, and she was shocked to hear it again. Where was it coming from? If she heard it a second time then that meant that it wasn't just her imagination. Where was this teenage boy who was making these odd comments?

Demyx started to slow his laughter, and looked back to her, his smile still in place on his face.

"Okay, okay I was kidding. You don't really have to start singing right now if you don't want to." He said, a hint of laughter still in his voice. "I have an idea though. Tell you what, when we get to the next town you'll sing, but I'll play a sitar with you, too. Deal?"

She looked back to him, her bewildered thoughts being set aside as she contemplated what he said. She remained silent, mulling over his weird determination to hear her sing. It took her a moment, a brief moment, before she answered his question.

"Deal." She said.

She was curious to know what a sitar was after all.

He smiled at her and looked over his shoulder to his left into the direction that they were walking in. He turned to face the direction of the path, and looked to her. She turned as well and started to walk with him, pleasant thoughts on her mind.

They had more in common than what she had thought.

They continued to walk for some time. She didn't know when, most likely when she was laughing hysterically, but the hood of the coat she was wearing fell down. She didn't really mind. It wasn't precipitating at all, and she didn't seem to mind having her face exposed around Demyx anymore. He may have done some awful things to her in the past, the recent past at that, but she felt as if he wasn't all that bad. In fact, he almost felt like a completely different person now.

Neither of them spoke during this time. She was still too tired from her little laughing episode, and she had a feeling that he felt the same way as her. It didn't really matter though. She was comfortable even without something to distract her.

Eventually, they started to reach the edge of the town. The sun was starting to get higher in the sky, and clouds were starting to appear. Maybe it would rain or snow later on at some point. She hoped that they would reach the next town before it did. She wanted some place to sleep for when that happened. It was bad enough that Demyx snored like he was a horse with a sore throat, but having to listen to that whilst trying to ignore that she was freezing cold outside in the middle of the rain just sounded awful.

She started to see some trees. They weren't the same type as the ones that she had seen when they were first walking here, but they were a bit similar. In only a few moments they were starting to walk in the forest.

"Alright." Demyx started to speak as they walked further into the forest. "When we get further into the forest I'll open up a corridor for us to go in. I'd open one now, but it'd be better to open one deeper in. Then we'll finally be able to take a break. I don't know about you but as soon as we get a place to stay in the next town I'm going to take a nice, long nap."

She nodded in agreement. She wasn't used to walking around so much, especially after being tied to that chair for so long.

The forested area that they were in was rather livelier than the area they had entered the town in, she noticed. There seemed to be more plant life here than where they had been before, and there were more winter animals moving about than in the other area. All of the trees steadily grew taller as they continued on deeper into the woods, as did their numbers. There was still a bit of snow inside here, probably due to the fact that the trees formed a canopy of leaves above them. It was everywhere; scattered on the ground, laying on leaves, and it was even resting on some sort of vines that were draping around. The terrain got rougher, too. The relatively level ground that they were walking on before started to become steep with hills, and she found that she had to be careful as she walked.

"What forest is this?" She asked curiously.

"Uh…" Demyx started, rubbing his chin before he lowered it, slouching down. "I don't know. I've only heard this place referenced as the forest, so I don't know its name..."

"Oh. Oh, no that's it name." She said. "If that's what people are calling this than that's what its name is. This is The Forest."

"The Forest?" He asked quizzically, looking at her.

"Yes." She replied. "This is a place that was renamed after the incident. I don't know what its name was before, but since there's only just one huge forest in the world, they decided to just call it The Forest."

"Ah…"

She knew this place. The Forest wasn't all too far from her hometown actually. There were a few smaller forests in the world, but The Forest was around the more populated areas. That meant that they weren't all that far from home.

"Gah!"

Heather quickly turned her head to look at Demyx, and saw him fall face first into a pile of snow. He spread his arms high in the air before he landed, as if that would save him from his fate, so when he landed his arms splattered into the snow as well. His left leg was high in the air while his right leg was down, his right foot caught on a tree root.

He immediately raised his head out from the pile after landing, spitting out a mouthful of dirty snow.

"Are you alright?" She asked, looked down at him concernedly.

"Ugh… yeah… I think…"He muttered, shaking his head rapidly like a dog, making the snow on it fling off. After a second he lifted his right arm, running a hand through his hair. "…is my hair alright?"

"You're hair looks fine." She replied offhandedly, not really rudely, watching as he pushed himself up.

"Okay good." He replied cheerfully, hopping back up into a standing position. Immediately after he winced, and he put a hand to his abdomen in what appeared to be a reflexive manner.

She walked closer to him, and moved her hand out towards where his was.

"What's wrong?" She asked, looking worriedly at his abdomen.

"Nothing much." He said, lifting his hand from his gut to wave her off. "It's just a bit sore, nothing major."

She blinked, suddenly realizing that the spot he was clutching at was where his stab wound had been. She forgot. She had forgotten that he had been punctured.

Of all things, she forgot _that_?

"It's just a bit sore? Doesn't it hurt more than that?" She asked, alarmed.

"No." Demyx said casually, loosening his shoulders. "It isn't all that bad. It'll just be sore for a few more days, remember? It's nothing to worry about; let's go."

He started to walk forward again, brushing off his clothes as he went along. She bit her lip, looking at his back. She looked away from him to the side, and tried to build up as much nerve as she could to speak her mind.

"Why is that?" She asked, her confidence slightly waning as she heard him stop walking. "Aren't you supposed to be in bad shape right now…?"

"No; not much. It's fine. Don't sweat it- we gotta' get going. C'mon." He said.

She heard him start to move away, but she made no move to follow. She debated to herself what she should do, biting at her bottom lip. He was avoiding answering her directly, but she wanted to know what was wrong with him. For all she knew he could be seriously hurt right now, and if he was then she wanted to know. She squeezed her eyes shut, physically bracing herself for the words she was about to say.

"...a doctor told me that you would be a mess for a few more days- so, why aren't you?" She asked, opening her eyes partially to look at him.

"That?" He asked, looking back at her and locking eyes with her. "Oh. I didn't tell anyone but I used a bit of magic to heal myself."

"Magic?" She asked, her timid attitude a moment ago slightly forgotten at the prospect of her new question. "Like Stop? How would that work?"

"Nah. I used Cure." He said offhandedly, walking back to her. "I know it's not really a well-known magic around here, but I know a bit of it. Not that much though, so I took the time they left me alone after they had the surgery on me as a chance to fix everything else up."

"Oh." She said simply, turning to face him. The only types of magic she knew of were Stop, Magnet, Reflect and their varieties. Stop was actually the only magic that she was capable of producing, since everyone learned how to use it at some point. The only people in the world that really used Magnet or Reflect magic were the people that had jobs that used them. She didn't know that there were other magic spells besides those ones. She was still a bit uncertain about what he said, but a healing spell would explain why he was alright. It made sense. There was good reason for a person to make a magic for healing; it wasn't that unbelievable.

"By the way, you came up with a really clever name for me there. I mean, Mr. Black?" Demyx asked rhetorically, grinning playfully. "Couldn't you have come up with anything more creative than that?"

Heather nearly felt herself blush at the comment. She didn't feel all too insulted, but she still felt something stir from his teasing remark. "It was the first thing I thought of…"

"Well, I probably wouldn't have come up with anything better than that. I'm not really known as the Melodious Dictionary… Person… Anyway, we're almost there Heather." Demyx announced, glancing at her as they continued to walk. "Just a bit further in and I think we'll be good. Then we'll go through the corridor to a town that doesn't have any stupid tree branches to trip over when you're walking along, minding your own business."

She nodded, looking back at him, commenting calmly instead of timidly. "I think that was a tree root."

"Tree root." He corrected himself, starting to walk faster. "Tree root, tree branch- whatever. We'll just be some place where we won't hurt ourselves by falling over random forest things. Now, c'mon, let's go! I want to get out of here."

She started to walk faster like he just had, nodding her head.

Unlike him however, she was forced to stop as she felt her ankle twist.

Suddenly the world was literally spinning all around her. She heard the sound of dead leaves being crushed underneath her weight, and she heard the sound of an occasional thud as she felt it. Bits of white and brown filtered through her vision, probably a mixture of snow and dirt. She had to close her eyes as she felt herself tumble down, fearing what would happen to them if she didn't.

"Heather!" She heard Demyx yell, but she was tumbling down the hill too fast for her to decipher anything that he was doing besides that.

She felt her body crash upon the ground as she fell, and whenever she landed after she was in the air for a few seconds she would whine in pain. With her eyes tightly closed shut she wasn't able to see where she was falling, but instead she was forced to focus on the sensations brought on due to her sense of touch. She pathetically tried to grab onto something to stop her descent, but she wound up hitting her bare hand against a hard rock in the process instead. She recoiled, drawing her arms back to herself, and attempted to cover her head with her arms. The coat flapped against her, somehow not getting caught on anything.

As she went down she felt herself being forced to curve in certain directions, the slopes dictating where she went. Several minutes passed and she was still rolling down the hill that she had managed to trip onto. A few more minutes passed. Finally, after recklessly falling down the hill for a good amount of distance she felt herself in the air.

Then she felt herself abruptly land flat on her back a few feet down and she cried out in pain.

She curled up into a ball, tears coming to her eyes. She grasped her left shoulder, which seemed to have been hit the hardest on her topple down. The tears leaked from her eyes, trailing down her face. The pain overwhelmed her, and she just stayed curled up in a little ball, only occasionally shifting in order to relieve her pain. After a few minutes of doing this, the pain started to fade. This fall had really hurt. Even as the pain started to fade away she still felt a sharp pang of pain in her shoulder. In a few more minutes she started to realize her current situation.

Cautiously, with the pain of her rough landing steadily diminishing, she opened her eyes. All she could see was the ground. The hood on her head only blocked a small amount of her range of vision. There were a few rocks scattered along the dirt, but thankfully she didn't seem to land on them. She could also see a bit of grass as well.

Knowing that it would probably be her best option at the moment she started to lift herself up, holding back a hiccup at the pain that came with the action, and sat up.

She was in a pit of some sort.

There were a bit of rocks scattered around her, and she could see some imbedded into the walls of the cliffs. Grass indeed grew in random patches where sunlight managed to filter though the leaves, weeds also seemed to work their way into the ground. Plants that were capable of living with little light and plants that preferred shade over direct sunlight also found their places among the pit floor.

She realized that she had twisted her ankle and fallen down the hill that they were walking on. If she was here than where was Demyx? What happened to him?

She tried to stand up, but the sharp spike of pain in her ankle convinced her to do otherwise. She sat back down and nursed her foot.

Where was Demyx? Did he come after her? She couldn't have fallen all too far. Sure, her fall had lasted what had felted what felt like several minutes, but she had stopped. A few minutes were a few minutes. If it only took her that long to fall down then it wouldn't take him all too long to find her. If he knew what way she had fallen down, of course. She may have made some turns that she wasn't aware of in her fall, which would make it harder for him to find him. She nibbled on her bottom lip, wondering what to do. She was too scared of what animals may have lurked nearby to call out to him. It might take a while for him to find her.

Suddenly a question struck her, and what the question implied left stunned her more than her fall.

Would he even bother to look for her?

As she sat there, stupefied by her own thoughts, she heard some swishing sounds. She paid no attention to the sounds, and instead thought about that question.

Would he come down here? It wasn't like he had much of a reason to, she realized. For whatever reason he had been bringing her along with him as he traveled around, but how strong of a reason did he have to do so? She had been so focused on why he was forcing her to come along with him that she didn't even think of him continuing on without her. It didn't even come to her in passing. She was so used to being around him that she hadn't even thought of not going along with him, and she didn't think of him not taking her with him. Really, what reason would he have for taking her with him for so long?

Why had he even taken her along with him in the first place?

There was a swishing sound again. She would have shrugged it off, but it was closer to her than it was before. She set her thoughts aside for the moment and looked around herself, freezing when she caught a glance at what was standing in front of her. Its main body was very simple, just an oval-like shape that held the pieces of its body together. It had two small arms that ended as hands with three sharp looking claws on them, and it had two legs without any visible toes that were just as small as its arms. It had a spherical head with two warped antennae coming out of it instead of ears, antennae that were gently flinging as it moved, and it had these ominous eyes that were completely yellow in color, nothing at all besides the yellow sclera. It looked directly at her, pacing side to side where it stood.

She stared at it, a sudden sensation of fear coursing through her. Whatever it was it was dangerous. It was dangerous like no other dangerous animal in the world. In the back of her mind, she dismissed the idea of it being an animal. It was a demon.

It just paced side to side, staring at her.

A twig snapped.

She looked behind the creature in front of her to see the figure of a man, and upon closer observation she got a look at him. He was wearing dark clothing, all but his head unexposed. This man had a familiar face, along with a familiar dark blonde colored mullet. His eyes were a little bit wide as he looked to the creature pacing in front of both of them, and then over to her.

With her eyes moving back towards the monster, she immediately looked back to him, and simply screamed.

"Demyx!" She shrieked desperately, looking to him terrified as the creature took the sound of her frantic voice as its cue to jump at her.

In the far back of her mind, she just barely realized something completely unrelated to the fate that was upon her.

This was the first time she had ever said Demyx's name.

With the monster's claws centimeters away from her chest, the last thing she processed before everything went dark was the voice of that teenage boy again as it made its final comment.

"I bet you can't even fight."


	13. To Reverse

Before her, eleven year old Heather turned in place, burying her small head underneath her pillow. Not even the girl's hard pillow managed to block out the sound of the remarkably out of tune singing that was coming from the room right next to hers, and the pillow was also incapable of granting her any sort of sleep that she could have gotten that night.

"-_and_ _so Herod McGuire and Legato Dunst's popular petition for an advancement in scholars' funding caught the attention of the current mayor, Sonore Lemaire, and together they raised funds for researching ways to benefit the future of_-_"_

"Shut up!" Her father yelled from her parents' bedroom on the other side of the hall. "Stop singing, get out of the damn shower, and go to bed!"

"But I have a test in the morning that I need to study for!" Her fifteen year old brother Heath defended, finally ceasing his horrible singing due to what must have been some wonderful deity's grace.

"If you needed to study so badly then you should have done it when you got home from school today- not in the middle of the night when you and other people need to be sleeping; especially by_ screeching_ it in the shower of all things! It's three in the morning! You have to get up for school in three hours, and your sister has to get up in three hours, too! I need to wake up in two and a half hours while your father needs to get up in just two hours! Two hours!" Her mother yelled back. "Get out of the shower right now, and go to bed young man!"

"But-"

"_Go to bed_!" Her father roared.

It was quiet for a moment; then she heard the sound of the water in the shower turning off. A moment after that she heard the sound of wet footsteps on the bathroom floor tiles. In a few moments she heard the flicking sound of the old lights being turned off and then the creaking of the bathroom door. Her brother walked down the hall to his bedroom, which was thankfully away from all of the other rooms at the other end of the hallway, and maneuvered himself through his own creaky bedroom door. With the final sound being him lying down on his old lumpy bed, silence reigned once again.

In the silence of the early morning, young Heather removed the pillow from her head and placed it in its proper place underneath of her head before she lied back down upon it, managing to drift off into sleep minutes later.

Heather stared down at her younger self blankly, simply observing things as they happened.

The scenery began to change. The colors warped, and the furniture moved around. Old decorations were replaced with new ones. The younger version of herself that was lying in her old comforters faded away. The box that previously held very used toys now held yarn, stacked so that they just managed to fit inside of it. Her bed was now neatly made, as if no one had been lying in it a moment prior. The pictures on her desk no longer held the images of children, but instead held the images of various young adults that were now in a different chapter of their lives, steadily moving onto their next. The room continued to morph until it was molded into a complete replica of what her bedroom looked like presently, and then like everything else in the room the younger version of herself was finally replaced as well.

A small group of people dressed in somewhat dark clothing were either standing up in it or were squatting to the ground. A straight-faced man with a flashlight was crouched down by her bed, waving the light around as to get a good look underneath of it. Another two men, both wearing plastic gloves, were by her door dusting it with some sort of small brush as they appeared to be speaking to each other. If they were speaking to each other, which she felt was true, then she couldn't hear them. A composed looking woman who was also wearing a pair of those plastic gloves identical to the two men to her right was looking through the desk, and a man further off on the opposite side of her was looking through the closet, a pair of gloves on as well.

One of the men by the door finished talking to the other man and left the room, the man that was scouring the closet followed, but not after glancing back into her bedroom one more time with a notable scowl on his face.

The scenery warped again and she watched as her bedroom, along with the people inside of it, vanished. It once again began to change into something else, but she didn't completely recognize what it was now, even though whatever it changed into was familiar to her.

It was a white room. Huge, white throne-like chairs that were all of varying heights lined the edges of the room in a circular shape. Some of them were up very high while some of them were down low, but all of them were outstandingly larger than normal chairs though. She felt as if each chair was its specific height for a reason, although for some reason, she felt as if the heights of the chairs could be changed at will.

All of this was familiar to her. She knew that she had never physically been in this room herself, but she felt as if she had seen it before. In fact, she felt as if she had seen in many times. Even though she felt as if she had never been in this room she felt as if she personally knew it. In the center of the room on the floor that the chairs looked over was an odd cross shape. It was spiked at the top and it was rounded at the bottom. She felt as if she remembered that from just here. The shape itself was more familiar than the entire room.

The room was devoid of people. It was that way for a while as she just stood watching it. For some reason she felt that while she could see the room, she wasn't actually in the room.

She didn't really notice how much time went by. It was all a blur and all she could focus on was what was happening around her. She didn't even think about anything. All she could do was watch as things happened. It took what had to have been a little while before something in the room actually changed.

Straight ahead of her on the tallest of the throne-like chairs a dark orb suddenly appeared. It transformed into a collection of fire-like swirls that were all various shades of dark colors before it vanished completely, leaving a completely hooded man wearing a black coat in its place, resting both of his arms on the chair's arm rests.

Shortly after he appeared a few others appeared, each one in the same dark swirls as the first man. One appeared on the chair next to him on his right side. This man was a bit lankier than him, and while the coat that he was wearing was almost completely identical to the other man's, it was different due to the more notable shoulder pads it had. His legs were spread out as far as they could be, something of which made him lean forward in his seat a little bit. With his hands resting on his kneecaps, he looked to be unperturbed by the area around him while still being attentive.

Four chairs to the relaxed man's right was another man on a slightly shorter chair. He was also wearing a coat like the other men, but unlike the man to his left his coat didn't have noticeable shoulder pads. Like the others, his face was shadowed underneath his hood. His left leg was crossed in a lounging position with his right arm resting on it while his other arm lied on his throne-like chair's armrest. Like the man that sat on the chair next to the tallest chair he was also in relaxed in his positioning, but not as offhandedly as the lankier man.

One more person appeared besides those other two men, and he was the first one to appear out of the three of them. He appeared to be the most poised out of the three men that had just appeared. The man before him sat five chairs away from on his left, while to this man's right three chairs away was the tallest chair. This man's throne-like chair was a couple of feet higher than the man to his left, but not as tall as the chair where the unperturbed man was sitting past the tallest chair on his right. His right leg was courteously crossed against his left, leaving a sparse amount of his leg out of contact with the other. His hands rested together on his kneecap formally, and he directed his attention to the man on the tallest chair. From his hood, what appeared to be long blue hair fell out.

After the last one in the group to arrive in the room appeared, the unperturbed man with his legs spread, the man with the blue hair falling out of his hood apparently began to speak. She couldn't hear any of what he was saying, nor could she actually she see him from where she was standing.

She stood on the circular floor far beneath the circle of chairs. Particularly, she was standing on the center of it on top of a familiar cross-like shape, and she could only see so much from her position on the ground below them. Her presence was apparently unacknowledged, for they fully focused on each other, never once looking down at her.

The scene changed again. Even though this scene was longer than the ones she had previously observed it changed just as quickly as the others. The shockingly white room with humongous chairs faded away, being replaced by another familiar setting. Unlike the room of white chairs, she specifically knew what this place was and why it was familiar to her.

It was her old high school's courtyard.

"He broke up with you! Why?" Cried a both shocked and confused Ashlee; a girl who Heather knew for her common name, her common appearance, and her rather uncommon ability to change her personality from airy to zany for reasons that only made sense to her. "You two have been together for four months now without any problems. I thought for sure you guys were getting it on by now. Why would he ditch an easy chick?"

Next to her the much more level-headed and normally deadpan Janessa sighed, already finding herself exasperated by the conversation even though it had just started. She rubbed at her forehead, an action Heather knew she did whenever she had a growing headache. As she prodded her temples with the tips of her fingers her dark, curled bangs fell into her face, lying onto her eyes. She irritably puffed them out of her face, only to twitch in silent ire when they fell right back into her eyes not even a second afterwards.

"It's not that I'm an easy chick… ugh." Janessa grumbled, growling as even more of her curly locks scratched at her corneas.

The young woman blinked as small purple hairclips were presented in front of her face. She looked over at the other girl next to her who meekly presented the clips to her, a seventeen year old Heather, and looked back to the clips with a smile that was only weakened by her obvious irritation.

Heather stared at her younger self, ignoring the memory reoccurring before her. Her slightly younger self was nearly identical to how she looked now. The only differences between them were that her younger self was wearing her old school uniform and her hair was a little bit shorter than it was now.

"Whoever said that romance was one of the greatest things in the world was obviously lucky, never involved in one, or an idiot." Janessa commented, her bangs now being held away from her face by Heather's spare hair clips. "I spent all that time with that guy, but in the end I didn't even wind up liking him all that much. The whole thing was just _stupid_. I figured that I would be happier than I already am if I started to date again, but it was just boring. Older or not he was just a pig-headed idiot like all the other guys I dated before. Honestly, I don't think he could even tell when I was there and when I wasn't. I decided that I wanted to dump him a while ago, but just when I started to talk to him about ending it the other day he suddenly just turned it all around so that he was dumping _me_ instead! It was obviously that he was just trying to save face, but I can't believe that he tried to do it by doing that! With how boring everything was I don't even get why he felt the need to do so. It was probably something dumb like he was trying to protect his ego or something. I wasted all of that time for no good reason! I can't believe I even considered that guy."

The younger Heather made a humming noise in agreement as she listened to her friend while Ashlee nodded her head, kicking her feet back and forth against the wall of the fountain that they were sitting on.

"Too bad you slept with him then. If he's as boring as you say he was than he must've been just as boring in bed." Ashlee said offhandedly, dividing her attention between actually looking at the people she was talking to at the moment and looking at her long, glittered nails.

Janessa looked like she was going to make rather scathing remark of some sort in retaliation, but looked away from her friend angrily, probably not having any good argument against her somewhat airheaded friend's words. Despite being lost in her own little world half of the time, Ashlee wound up being more perceptive than she realized.

"Dating really is a total pain. I just do it to do it. I'd never date the guys here if I could, but it's not like there are_ other _guys out there to choose from, you know?" Ashlee said, looking up at the sky above them, as if there were other guys up there. "At least the sex is fun."

"It would be so much easier if we were like you, Heather." Janessa said, looking towards the younger version of Heather again. With the face that she was making it was obvious to both versions of Heather that she was restraining herself from yelling at her other friend about various things that all alluded to a lack of what she considered to be proper morals, but her facial expression eventually returned to normal as she continued speaking. "You're not even interested in dating, right? You've had a few admirers over the years, but you never did anything about them."

"Yeah Heather it is kinda' weird. I mean, you could have just used them to get you some new clothes or had sex with them." Ashlee commented, finally turning to face her friends. She inched in closer to the younger Heather, making a suspicious face as she started to whisper. "Are you even into guys? Are you, like, a closet lesbian and can't tell us? It's totally cool if you are, but I haven't seen you even look at girls changing in the locker room before… then again I haven't seen you looking at anyone…"

Janessa gave Ashlee a glaring look, but it went completely unnoticed.

"Actually… I'm not sure." The younger version of Heather said, speaking for the first time. "I've never really thought about it. I've always known that I'm attracted to guys, but I've never had feelings for any of the ones I've met before. I've thought that some of them were good looking, but nothing ever more than that. When I think about dating… I think it's… pointless, for some reason; not for me. I mean I want to be in a relationship, but I don't want to have a relationship with anyone here. I don't know why. I just can't imagine myself with anyone we know. It's… it's almost like… I'm…"

She trailed off, staring at her hands. Both of her friends had been leaning into her without either of them apparently realizing it, probably a bit eager to hear what the usually private girl meant.

"…nothing. I don't know how to say it." The younger Heather commented, looking away from her friends almost comically disappointed reactions. Janessa quickly composed herself and started to look at her class notes without another word, while Ashlee oh so wisely decided that it was best to pout in this situation as she grumbled to herself something about secrets.

The scenery changed once more in front of Heather, taking her away from the memory just when she knew the conversation would go on to discuss topics like their schoolwork and the latest sales at the stores. The school garden full of teenagers talking about nothing all too important dissipated, transforming into a dark room filled with illuminated tanks of water that were visible through holes in the walls, like windows.

Standing in front of a smaller window viewing a tank along a corner of the wall she was facing was a little girl wearing a teal colored short sleeved shirt, lightly colored jeans, and dark flip flops. It was a little bit difficult to tell in the current lighting, but she realized that the little girl's hair was actually a light shade of black.

Standing next to her was a man with notably darker black hair and a woman with a dull shade of long brown hair tied into a messy bun on the right side of her head. Both of them were wearing similar clothing to the girl, except that the man's clothing was a bit messier than the woman's. The woman was holding the left hand of a rather excited boy with dark black hair in her right, and only when the boy turned his head to face the woman did she realize who these people were.

The little boy had the face of her older brother when he was young, maybe around eight years old. As she recognized the boy as her brother she recognized the two adults as both her father and her mother. Then she recognized the little girl as herself from when she was younger.

"Mom, can we look at the sharks now? Please? Please!" The younger version of her brother pleaded with the woman next to him, beginning to point down the hall with his free hand while he shook hers with his others.

"Well, we told you that we were going to see the sharks last Heath, and Heather still wants to look at this tank right now…" Her mother trailed off, looking down at the pouting energetic boy holding her hand.

"I think you should take him to see the sharks now, Hannah." Her father said as he turned his head to face his wife, showing her that he was lacking some of the wrinkles on his face she knew that he had now. "He's put up with waiting for this long, and he's normally so lethargic all the time. If he's actually this excited about seeing the sharks then he should go see them before the zoo closes. I'll stay here with Heather. We'll catch up in a little while."

"Alright then." Her mother replied, turning to face her son. "C'mon honey, let's go see the sharks now."

The younger version of her brother cheered and attempted to run down the hallway, her mother's grip on his hand preventing him from actually doing so. He looked up at her in response and promptly whined. She continued to walk, unaffected by his moans, and soon he calmed down enough to settle for simply looking down the hallway enthusiastically.

Heather turned her attention towards the younger version of her father and the younger version of herself. Her younger self continued to look into the tank in front of her, fascinated. Her father looked down at her, and then to the tank.

"Do you like the turtles a lot, Heather?" Her father asked, looking down at his young daughter again.

"Yeah." The younger version of herself whispered, intently watching the turtles in the tank as they swam about. "Uhm…"

"What?" Her father asked the younger girl.

"Can…" The little girl quietly started, but looked down at her feet as she nibbled on her lips. "…can we get one?"

"Hmm. I don't know about that, Heather. Taking care of an animal is a lot of work. Do you even know what these turtles are?" He asked.

While she understood that he was asking this in a rather gentle tone to the younger version of herself, her younger self seemed to have taken his tone as a quizzical one. The younger version of herself looked down at the ground, sucking on her bottom lip. She tried to glance up at her father without him noticing, but, unbeknownst to the little girl, it was completely obvious that she was doing so.

"I don't know…" She finally whispered as she looked down, her words barely audible.

She watched as the younger version of her father looked at a stand next to the tank, reading the words written on it, and turned back to his daughter.

"These are bog turtles, Heather." He explained. "They're from a group of turtles called Clemmys, and the Clemmys are from a bigger group of turtles called Emydidae. They're Emydidae turtles."

"Emydidae…" Her younger self repeated, awestruck as she looked at the bog turtles in front of her, which are still to this day her favorite type of animal. Even though she heard her younger self completely fine, she felt as if the younger version of her father didn't hear her.

With that said, the scenery once again began to change.

Instead of morphing into something else though, everything went black. She stood in the pitch black space around her, confused. No longer being focused on a scene taking place in front of her, she started to think clearly again. Shouldn't some other bizarre scene take place before her again like it had been so continuously, with her as a completely unnoticed bystander that may or may not be capable of hearing what was being said? Why did it stop?

Suddenly a horrible pain went through her. She clutched at her head as it began to swam, and she vaguely felt herself waver where she stood before the pain consumed her. In her pain filled haze the only thing she managed to process was the sound of voice, but she wasn't able to tell where they were coming from.

"_Where am I?" _

It was a deep, masculine voice, slightly wavering in tone. The voice was familiar to her from some reason. She just didn't know where she heard it before.

"_Th-there were monsters! There were monsters everywhere!"_

This voice had to have come from a child, probably a little boy. This voice was just as familiar to her as the one before it, but she felt as if she knew who in particular the voice belonged to, only the name wasn't coming to her.

She took in a coarse breath as she tried to steady herself on her feet. She managed to catch herself before she fell over, but she was incapable of moving her hands from her head. She opened her notably dilated eyes to her feet, and stared as her feet started to glow in some odd light. She squeezed her eyes shut once again and grinded her teeth, feeling tears flowing from her eyes due to the pain that she was in. Her head swam and she felt as if she was spinning about like a top. The voices that followed her pain came in a rush, making her unable to decipher the voices that said them, but just slow enough for her to hear what they were saying.

"_No one would miss me."_

"_You have no heart!"_

"_You turn from the truth because your heart is weak!"_

"_If only the whispers at the top of the ladder carried here to the bottom rung."_

"_You and I both miss someone we care about."_

"_True, we don't have hearts, but we remember what it was like."_

"_Kingdom Hearts is made of the very things we lack- a multitude of hearts. It has the power to complete us."_

"_See the power of darkness!"_

"_I've had enough of this!"_

"_You don't need a heart to know how to manipulate one."_

"_There it is, right out that window: Kingdom Hearts. What do you make of it?"_

"_Yes… Kingdom Hearts… Rejoice, and feed on these hearts we offer! Shine your pale light on this realm… Share your power with all Nobodies!"_

She gasped, the pain suddenly vanishing as she heard the last statement from an incredibly familiar voice that she couldn't identify in her pain.

"_Oh, we do too have hearts! Don't be mad."_

She inhaled and exhaled very quiet breaths as she began to calm herself down. She opened her eyes and looked around in the darkness that surrounded her. Just as she was starting to wonder about what was going on she was hit once again by a wave of pain, but this time the pain was more throbbing than the sharp pain that she was feeling a moment ago.

The black around her transformed again. Instead of a room of some sort it was a mountainous area outdoors.

It was primarily a collection of many large rock formations, the ground itself being mainly comprised of stone instead of dirt, but there was a scarce amount of tropical plants speckled in the corners of a leveled area of rock. The rock comprised landscapes turned out to be a set of small islands that were scattered around an ocean of some sort. The most notable one was a completely stone-composed island that was in the shape of a human skull, facial features and all. High above the islands was the sky, completely blue except for what appeared to be a dark dot. Figuring that the dot was something that she ought to pay attention to, Heather focused on the dot.

She managed to make out that it was a creature of some sort. It had a smooth, dark blue colored cone shaped body. It had a thick light blue colored stripe horizontally running along its midsection, taking up about a third of the cone-shaped part of its body. The bottom part of the cone shape was rounded while the smaller top part of it was jagged, making it almost look like a collar. It didn't appear to have arms, but beneath this part of its body were two black colored feet that sported three small, talon-like toes. Above the cone-shaped part of its body was a pitch black sphere that was apparently its head, with two eerily glowing yellow eyes near the top of it. On top of its head was a light blue colored hat-like body part that had a pale, jagged brim and a very long curled tip.

The long tip was separated from the rest of this body part by what looked like two bands, as if the tip was a ponytail. One band was colored a hue of white that matched the brim while the other one was a shade of black that matched the creature's head. This part of the creature's body instantly reminded her of a stereotypical witch's hat. She thought for a moment that it might be a hat, but something told her otherwise.

The oddest thing about that this creature, even in comparison to everything odd about it, was that in the center of its chest was a black shape of some sort that was outlined red. Oddly, the shape almost looked like a stretched heart.

She watched this creature, and in a moment she saw it shoot out something from its hat-like extension that looked like a sphere of water. It hit something, making her notice that the creature was hovering above and around a person.

Unlike the creature, she was unable to see any sort of details on this person besides the fact that he, if this person was a man, was wearing brown colored clothing. She assumed that this person was an adult due to his size, and she felt correct in that assumption. What she was able to see clearly, however, was that he was holding what looked to be a blade of some sort, but nothing like she had ever seen before. At the sight of that blade something inside of her… pinched.

The man with the blade darted away from another slow moving sphere that the blue creature sent at it with impressive speed. He stopped running once the orb chasing him vanished and, raising his blade as he did so, he leapt at the creature floating in the air. He slashed at it, and the creature vanished in a black mist, a pinkish thing floating into the sky as it did so.

She stared at where the creature had been. Instead of thinking about what happened, how it happened, or who that person was she simply continued to stare at where the creature had been. She didn't even notice that the man with the blade left a few moments after apparently vanquishing the bizarre creature, completely caught up in looking at where it had been. She had no idea what had happened, but that creature was incredibly familiar to her.

She had no idea why, but all sorts of emotions came to her as she saw it vanish. She didn't understand why. She felt a mixture of shock, disbelief, and, actually… relief. She was stunned by what happened to it, but for some reason, she felt as if the fact that it had vanished in such an odd manner wasn't what stunned her. She felt as if she was stunned that it was actually there in the first place. Oddly enough, after a few moments of staring at the spot where it had been hovering, she felt as if she accepted something important.

She didn't know how, but she felt as if she understood.

The scenery around her faded back into the darkness once more. She cried in surprise as the pain intensified again and she started to claw at her hair, desperate to focus on something besides the dreadful pounding going through her head. Unlike the other scenes that she had observed previously, she found that even through the pain the emotions that she had from what she had seen still lingered with her instead of vanishing.

"_Hey, you guys are looking lively."_

Heather's eyes widened despite the pain as she recognized this voice as Demyx's. She squeezed her eyes shut again and made a face as her surprised action's pausing of her pain quickly flashed away.

"_Scram!"_

This voice came to her as odd. It was highly accented, but she wasn't sure as to what accent it could be. It was apparently masculine, but the accent was so thick that she could barely even tell. She had never heard anything like it.

"_Didn't we catch you messing around in the Underworld? How'd a wimp like you get into Organization XIII?"_

She felt stunned once again as she recognized the voice, but this time, it wasn't Demyx that spoke. It was that teenage boy's voice that she had been hearing earlier.

"_I bet you can't even fight."_

That phrase- she had heard it before.

Her focus on the pain she was going through faded slightly, and the sound of the teenage boy's voice echoed throughout her head. This was one of the things that she had heard the boy's voice earlier- it was what she heard him say before she wound up in this place.

"_Yeah, but we can!"_

It was the accented voice again. It made her snap out of her realization, and she started to focus once again on what was being said. She had been focused solely on the voice that had spoken a moment ago after realizing that it was the teenage boy's that she had been hearing. She hadn't been actually paying all that much attention to what it was saying.

"_You shouldn't judge anyone by appearance."_

It was Demyx again, using his natural sounding tone of voice that was somewhere in between his deep tone and his boyish tone. Along with speaking with that certain volume, he said his words in a rather corrective matter, making it sound as if he was scolding a silly child.

"_I told them they were sending the wrong guy..."_

This comment was also spoken by Demyx, but his tone sounded closer to his boyish one instead of his deeper one. If she could, she would have blinked in surprise. It sounded like he was moaning despairingly to himself.

"_Who is this kook?"_

It was the teenage boy's voice again. Her thoughts of what they were saying were disrupted as she heard his comment and recognized it as something else she had heard him say earlier.

"_Remember, the Organization's made up of Nobodies."_

The new voice made her wandering thoughts focus on what she was hearing again. It was also accented, but not as heavily as the first accented voice. She could instantly tell that it was masculine.

Now that she was starting to pay attention to the conversation, she found that she was starting to develop some new questions. What was this about an organization of nobodies?

"_Right- no hearts!"_

The teenager's words confused her. Thankfully, she hadn't heard him say this before, so she had an easier time avoiding getting lost in her previous questions as to why she had heard him before. What could he mean by not having hearts?

"_Oh, we do too have hearts! Don't be mad..."_

She instantly recognized the tone that Demyx was using. It was near his boyish tone, but not incredibly close. Instead, it was very suggestive in sound. He had spoken to her using that tone before, and anytime he did, he wound up confusing her in some way. Whenever he used that tone he always presented a point to something that hadn't occurred to her before he did so. She always had a nagging, intuitive-like feeling that the voice he had used was on purpose, but she had never taken that feeling very seriously. Did he use that voice on purpose?

"_You can't trick us!"_

It was the first accented voice again. It was just as loud as it had been the first time, and just as quick to come. The voices remained silent for a short moment after he shouted his comment, making her focus on her pain once more as she had a chance to think over what she had heard so far. She didn't really have a clue as to what these voices were talking about. She was drawn out of her thoughts very quickly, by the sound of Demyx saying something in a rather deep tone, but not his deepest.

"_Silence, traitor."_

Pain took a hold of her once more. This time, for some reason, the pain didn't bother her as much. Sure, she felt it, but she didn't feel any strong emotions behind it. The confusion that plagued her started to clear up as she finally felt that she was starting to get an answer for her questions. Everything around her was spinning; both her surroundings and her mind. She couldn't find any sort of stable ground for herself, but she once again felt unbothered.

For some reason, even though her eyes were now currently closed, she felt as if the black around her was starting to fade away. No, not that. Something was fading away. That she was sure of. She just didn't know what. Even though she had become questioning towards things she didn't understand, she felt no need to question this. She felt as if she did understand this, just on a different sort of level than consciously.

"Do you understand now, Heather?"

The voice easily pierced through the spiraling sensations that she was feeling, but she was completely unbothered by it. She could tell, however, that this voice wasn't like the other ones. It felt just as familiar to her as the other ones did, but this one felt more relevant. It was like she had actually interacted with this one more recently. The biggest difference she felt though was that unlike the other ones, she didn't feel as if she were simply listening to something being said. She felt as if she was being talked to.

She nodded her head in response to its question, as if this voice could see her. The area around her started to fade away, even though she couldn't see it. It left as if steadily going piece by piece. This didn't surprise her. It didn't even bother her. She had started to expect something like this. She felt like she had known what was happening deep down, and the reason for why this was all happening was coming to the surface.

She didn't know why, but she felt like she was understanding something that she had needed to understand for a long time. Despite the fact that she never would have thought that she would any reason to perform her next action in this situation at any other moment, she suddenly felt like she didn't need to have a reason now.

Even though she knew everything was about to fade away, she weakly smiled, tears falling down her face.

* * *

><p>The shadow heartless was blasted by a geyser of water, making the unsuspecting abomination of humanity soar into the air where its body burst due to the physical pressure of the attack. Instead of flesh spreading everywhere as a result of the miniature explosion, only a black mist emerged as remains of the body. That mist, something that was wholly unnatural in nature, was a much more chilling sight than any gore that could have come from a body.<p>

Demyx redirected the water he used to attack the shadow heartless in front of him in the air, forming a large orb of water. With a wave of his hand he sent globs of it out in a multitude of directions through the trees that surrounded. He maneuvered his water quickly throughout the entirety of the forest from where he stood; physically looking at nothing in particular as he did so. He didn't have to focus too hard on where his water was going because whenever it collided into something, like a particularly wide tree, he would just have the water reform from the splattered remains that resulted and continue on. Any nearby heartless would be attracted to the magic, and if they were then he would simply use his water to destroy them. After a few minutes he deemed the scouting sufficient enough, and he dismissed his water magic.

He focused his attention back on Heather, having determined that the shadow that had attacked her was the end of the heartless that he would have to deal with. He would be sure to contemplate the reasons for why the heartless appeared later, especially one that was alone, but Heather's condition required immediate attention.

"Heather? Are you alright?" He asked in a masterfully made caring tone, graciously moving towards her. He determined that acting awkwardly and unsurely as he typically did around her was not what the current situation called for.

She sat unmoving on the ground, her face stuck in an expression of horror. He wasn't surprised. She had narrowly avoided having her heart stolen, and it was decently possible that her heart had taken some damage before he destroyed the heartless. He was absolutely certain that she didn't know of the existence of her heart, so having to so suddenly discover its existence easily could've shocked her. Knowing how she handled stressful situations, it was quite possible that she had retreated into herself. While quite weak, it was something that she had done before whenever he had taunted with her heart. He also knew that she very well could awaken from her stupor later without the faintest hint of recollection. She had done this before multiple times whenever she happened to hit a point where she was psychologically overwhelmed by being held hostage by him. Both of these possible reactions were a pathetic response to her problems, but she was not a strong person.

He put a hand underneath her chin, raising her head so that he was able to look in her eyes. Her eyes, colored a rather greyish shade of brown, weren't reflecting any sort of light that they normally would have picked up. Her pupils were dilated, spreading far across her unmoving irises. He waved a hand in front of her eyes, receiving no sort of response in return. She wasn't responding to any mental stimulation, physical stimulation, or visible stimulation that was presented to her. This was not the best of signs.

"Listen to me, Heather." He said, gripping her shoulders in a gentle manner. He carefully selected his words, making sure that they both fitted the character that he presented to her and didn't set her off in any way to avoid shocking her any further. "It's okay now. The thing that attacked you is _not_ coming back. It's gone. Nothing bad can happen to you now that I'm here. You don't have to be scared anymore."

She didn't respond in any sort of way. She didn't even act in any way that suggested that she had heard the sound of his voice. He let go of her shoulders, standing warily in front of her. He was certain now that she had withdrawn into herself and that she wasn't going to respond to anything unless something in her mind forced her to. He knew to be careful, since the last time she had withdrawn into herself he had nearly died as a result. Still, even if her heart hadn't been damaged she could very well be in shock, which made her quite vulnerable, and that was what he was inclined to believe at the moment.

"Let's go, Heather. We'll get a place to stay in the next town, and you can rest there. I'll open up a corridor now; we're deep enough in the forest for me to do it." He said, opening a corridor by manipulating the darkness inside of him to move through his left fingers, making it look like he was simply raising his hand rather than handling dark magic. "Here, I'll help you."

He squatted slightly, moving behind her to help her up. He wrapped his right arm underneath her arms and positioned her left arm across his shoulder, pushing her weight onto him. It was a rather awkward position due to the differences in their heights, so he slouched down slightly so that he wouldn't pull her arm out of its socket. As he moved her body around he noted that she still didn't react at all. She didn't even twitch. Once he had her positioned correctly he rose to his feet, taking her with him.

Against his hopes, as he started to walk forward she didn't move at all. Her feet simply dragged across the ground, her body feeling like dead weight. He sighed animatedly even though he knew that no one was around to see him do so. This would be like dragging a five foot potato sack. He had planned that she would at least somewhat walk along with him, even if she didn't react to anything else, but it was obvious that she wasn't capable of moving in her current state. If she wasn't capable of walking than he would have to carry her in the corridor.

While nothing actually bothered him he considered it vital to retain his lazy nature, and carrying her was definitely not something that fit under the description of lazy. Sure, he was fully capable of carrying her without any actual hassle, his sitar was much more substantial than her after all, but he still wanted to appear lazy. Hopefully she would be capable of walking by the time that they reached the next town for he also knew that it would look awfully strange for a young man to be seen carrying an unconscious woman in his arms throughout a town, let alone a fully cloaked woman. Unfortunately, the cloak was a necessary evil since it was the only thing that protected her heart from the darkness of his corridors. He was unaffected by the darkness since he had no heart to taint, but her heart was still susceptible to the darkness, especially in her current state.

Demyx turned his body to face the girl he was holding, making sure that he didn't injure her while he moved. When he managed to position himself right in front of her while at the same time still keeping her upright a few moments later he distinctly felt something pierce through his chest. He looked down to see a dagger stabbed clean through his chest in the area where his physical heart was located, the grip being held in Heather's hand.


	14. To Separate

As soon as Demyx processed the blade in his chest did he feel it being removed from his chest, and he jumped back a good amount of feet in response to the movement. He refocused his attention onto his current threat at the moment as he speedily assessed the situation, thinking over how he was going to react to anything that could possibly happen next.

In front of him, Heather was slightly bowed over, having just barely missed slashing her companion in half. He noticed her steadily rise back to her full height, her facial expression unresponsive still. Besides the physical movements she had just made, she appeared to be otherwise unaffected by her failed attempt to maim him. In a firm movement she returned her outstretched arm to her side, letting him get a good view of the twin hook swords being held in both of her hands. His blood dripped from the dagger of the hook sword in her left hand, slowly falling off of the metallic blade by gravity's pull.

His observations were cut short as she began charging towards him, her blades securely held on either side of her. Without a moment of hesitation he quickly summoned Arpeggio into his waiting arms, having predicted that he had no time to perform the usual theatrical movements that he normally did whenever he conjured up his weapon. Just as quickly as he had summoned it did he have to use it to shield himself as his opponent's blades come crashing down. The metal clashed against his magically created weapon with an unexpected amount of strength that was more forceful than he had imagined, creating a slightly surprising amount of friction between the two opposing forces.

Heather jumped back away from him, quickly slashing the silver hook sword in her right hand forward in an attempt to catch the neck of his sitar in the blade's hook. He raised his sitar, preventing the blade from catching onto any part of his weapon. She tried to catch his sitar with her opposite blade and he blocked this attack as well.

She went on to slash at him with her blades several times, occasionally trying to get his sitar trapped in one of her blades while at other times trying to attack an opening in his defense. He blocked all of her attacks as they came at him, yelping whenever a blade got to close to his body for comfort. Had he not have been so focused on blocking all of her rapid attacks he would've made sure to yell when she nearly hacked off the top of his mullet.

"Heather!" He called, raising his sitar to block an attack made with her left hook sword. He stared into her blank eyes as he forced his sitar against her weapon. "What are you doing, Heather? It's me- Demyx!"

She gave no response. He saw that her eyes were directly fixed on his appearance, yet they didn't reflect him. He put more strength into his push, now easily overpowering the combined force of her pushing both of her blades against his sitar. He swung the neck of his sitar out towards her blades, being careful not to hit her with the daggers on the end of it and not to get it caught in either of the hook ends.

She blocked his attack and bent her body away from him, twisting to the ground. She lashed one of her blades towards his feet, trying to get his foot caught in the hook of her sword to make him trip.

He obstructed the blade before it could make contact with his body, forcibly pushing the blade up high away from him despite her resistance. She flew a foot into the air from the force of his throw, leaving a perfect opening as she hovered helplessly in the air for a second. She crashed back down onto the ground just as he used this opportunity to jump away from her, and she immediately came rushing back towards him again once she was on her feet.

It wasn't in his intentions to hurt her; all he wanted to do was disarm her so he could restrain her for as long as it took him to figure out what was going on.

He jumped away from her again as she tried to slash at him once more, gripping his sitar harder than usual before he landed on the ground again. Instead of charging towards him again she stayed in place, quickly pressing her blades against each other, making them slide against the other until both of the hooks on their ends connected together. She released her grip on the left blade whilst simultaneously lashing out with her right arm, making the combined weapons whip out towards him. Taking no emotional surprise in this new type of attack, he just barely managed to lean away before the dagger end cut through his neck.

His opponent took no time to be surprised by her failure, catching the grip of her casted blade before it could strike her and removed it from her other sword. She charged at him again, trying to get his arm caught in one of the hooks only to be blocked by his sitar.

"Heather, listen to me." He said while still putting some effort into holding his sitar up against the pressure that her blades created as they pushed against him, deciding that using an emotional appeal right now certainly wouldn't kill him. "It's Demyx speaking to you. I'm not your enemy. I'm your friend. You're attacking the wrong guy. Don't you remember me, Heather? I wouldn't be here right now if we were enemies, and I would have killed you a few moments ago when you weren't able to protect yourself if I was supposed to. If you were going to attack anything, then I would attack with you, because your enemy is my enemy, too. We're allies."

Heather remained unresponsive, her eyes still blank as she continued to struggle against his weapon.

"C'mon, Heather; I'm Demyx. You can trust me."

She still didn't respond. She continued to push against his weapon in vain, unable to overpower him with the amount of strength that her body had in comparison to his. In the short distance between the two of them he noticed the sweat that was forming on her face, showing him how much her body was indeed starting to tire. With the conditions that she had been exposed to the last few weeks and the fact that she had probably never trained for physical combat before while he had been fighting heartless for nearly a decade now, the difference in their strength was obvious.

Suddenly, she stopped pushing against him. Instead, she moved her hook swords back to her side as she turned towards the opposite direction of him, and she started to dash away. He looked at her retreating form for but a moment to process what had just happened before he started to chase after her, readjusting his sitar from its blocking position to an angle in order to support its weight better.

"Heather!" He yelled after her, running towards the walls of the pit where she was.

She was climbing the wall by the time that he had reached it, and he had to start climbing up the wall of the pit as well in order to follow her. He struggled to climb up the edges with only his right hand, having to hold his sitar in his left. He was notably burdened by this hindrance while she lacked one altogether, and she started to gain some distance from him. Despite his hurried movements, by the time that he was halfway up the wall she had reached the top of the pit, and once she was on her feet she started to run away. He started to rush after her, holding his sitar uncomfortably in his limbs so that he could climb with both of his hands.

"Heather!" He called out to her urgently whilst he continued to struggle to climb. "Come back, Heather!"

After a few moments he finally reached the top of the wall, and he pushed himself onto the level ground. He scrambled to his feet, scrapping his left kneecap in the process as he picked his sitar back up into his hands. He looked in front of himself in all sorts of directions before he spotted the dark form of Heather's back fading in the distance, and he immediately started to run in that direction.

"Heather! Wait! Listen to me, Heather! I won't hurt you if you come back over to me- I want to help you!" He yelled, making his legs pound back and forth against the ground as he tried to think of something that would make her stop running.

It was apparent that Demyx was a faster runner than Heather. He was actually quite used to running at high speeds, constantly running away from hordes of enemies that wanted very much to kill you did that to a person, and due to the fact that he was taller than her his longer legs were capable of covering more distance than what she was capable of. In any other case the fact that he was more used to running than her and the superior amount of distance he was able to move in a shorter amount of time than her would have let him catch up to her. If he was running anywhere else then he certainly would have caught up to her, but in this place, what prevented him from catching up to her now was the very thing that normally benefitted him when running; the fact that he was taller than her.

While he chased after her he had to duck underneath of undergrowth and maneuver past various other obstacles that the forest presented. She, however, didn't have as much trouble doing so. What he would have to take a moment to move past she didn't even have to put effort into avoiding. Due to the fact that she was shorter than him she didn't have to bend underneath of nearly as many tree branches as he did, and she got caught in vines a lot less frequently than he did.

"Damn it." He muttered, roughly pushing a coniferous tree branch with a bit of snow on it away from his head. He flicked a few strings on his sitar, preparing to use water magic in his effort to stop her. "Dance water- dance now!"

He sent a good amount of water ahead of him after her, the largest amount that he could conjure up that would still be fast enough to catch up to her, and he kept an eye on his magic while he manipulated its movements as he continued to run towards her. His water avoided the obstacles that he faced better than he did, and it was steadily starting to get closer to its target. When the water was within inches of its target, Heather soundlessly raised one of hook swords, not even looking back at what she was doing as she blocked the water magic's attempt to capture her.

The water splattered uselessly onto the ground, leaving rain droplet sized holes wherever it landed in the small piles of snow. Demyx batted a frostbitten vine away from his face as he saw this and moved his hand to his sitar's strings. He quickly began plotting what he would do next to try to stop her, or at the very least try to slow her down. If his magic couldn't stop her, then his magic could at least preoccupy her long enough for him to close the distance between the two of them.

Just as he strummed a few strings on his sitar, he noticed that she had suddenly made a sharp turn up a hill. He slowed down slightly so that he would be able to make the turn that she had just made instead of plowing straight into a tree. He looked towards where she had gone and followed, his right hand hovering over the jawari of his sitar all the while. He raced up the hill and once he reached the top, he stopped.

The top of the hill was wooded, much more wooded than the area that he been chasing after her before. He looked around the area, trying to find where she had gone. With all of the trees blocking his visage of anything beyond them he couldn't see her anywhere. He closed his eyes to listen to his surroundings without anything to break concentration, but after a few moments had passed he still didn't hear anything around him besides the hooting of a night owl.

He puffed out a bit of air out of his mouth in an exasperated way that could have been considered ironic, but as he started to look around again he still couldn't see anything. He turned in place, wondering if she had decided to try to trick him by running down the way that he had come, but he didn't see her anywhere down the hill. He looked around himself in all directions, but as the moments passed, he realized that he wouldn't be seeing what he was looking for from where he was now.

He had lost her.

* * *

><p>The snow was completely gone at this point. There wasn't a speck of white in sight, and the area was completely barren of moisture except for the occasional bit of evening dew. Demyx walked down the side of a road, having just left The Forest. It had taken him longer than he had thought it would to get out of the wooded area, mainly because in his haste to chase after Heather he had been more focused on her rather than his exact location.<p>

A truck passed him by, making him shiver as the wind it created whipped against him. He rubbed his arms together quickly as he fought off the urge to shudder. Despite the fact that the days were starting to become a bit warmer the days were sure to become colder once again as winter still had a few more months until it was finished, and he would have to get a good coat from somewhere. The weather wouldn't even be a concern if he had his Organization coat, but it was still with Heather at the moment.

He stopped, taking a short moment in order to sigh dramatically. He easily shrugged the thought of her out of his head as he continued to walk down the road, practically shivering to his very bones.

He had time to think of what he would do about her later. The most pressing issue at hand was that he had no idea as to where he was. When he still had Heather tied up in the house he took the free time he had in the day to examine the world that he was currently in, investigating what kind of place he had wound up in. To this day he still had no idea as to why he had appeared here in the first place, but he had decided that he would focus on mapping out the world around him before he really thought into too much depth about that. In all of the daily trips he had dedicated to scouring the world however, he had always tried to stay somewhat close to the house, making sure to be around in case something happened despite the water clones that he left there while he was gone.

It was just his luck that he was now travelling blindly through one of the few areas that he had neglected to explore before, and at the moment, he wasn't even able to determine where the place he was currently in was in relation to anything that he was familiar with.

Mapping out his current location wouldn't be all that difficult though. He had been going on reconnaissance missions for a very long time now, nearly as long as he had been a Nobody. Mapping out this area would be pretty easy, even if he was blindly travelling through it. It wasn't like he hadn't blindly travelled through unknown territory before. He had done that frequently on recon missions, especially whenever there was a new world the Organization wanted him to explore. Mapping it out wasn't a problem, but the fact that he would have to do unexpected work almost was, since he wouldn't be able to act all that lazy while doing so.

While he had trouble mapping out The Forest itself since he had gotten lost in it, he knew where The Forest was in relation to the areas that he had already mapped out. He knew everything that was to the southwest, the south, the southeast, the east, and the northeast of it.

To the east of The Forest was a long trail of mountains, which were referred to as The Mountains. He honestly didn't know that The Forest was actually named that since the smaller forests were at least given their own names, but this really just proved that the people in this world weren't all that creative with their names. Even the streets in Heather's hometown had been named that blandly- First Street, Second Street, Third Street, and so on, all the way up into the hundreds. He could've sworn that every person in this world was as uncreative as Heather.

Past The Mountains was just a wasteland that was devoid of any type of human community; it was probably named something as creative as The Wasteland or something along those lines knowing these people, he had never bothered to look into its name. That decision was made for the fact that he wanted to be lazy, and that he hadn't had a reason for delving too much into that area. It apparently continued on until the land met with the ocean, and it was home to a good lot of the world's animal life. That was all he really wanted to know about the area. While he did collect information on it since he wanted as much information about the world as he could, nothing there gave him any significant reason to have anything to do with it. He still had little interest in that area actually. He would go there at some point for the sake of mapping the entire world out, but he wouldn't go there immediately unless for a specific reason.

He knew the location of all of the major settlements in the directions he was familiar with around The Forest; To City was to the south of it, Gether Town was to the southwest, and Corner Town was to the east. There were some smaller settlements scattered about besides those ones, but officially, they were all a legal part of all of these three areas.

Corner Town pretty much functioned on its own without having anything to do with the other large areas, and the majority of the smaller settlements that were officially a part of another area belonged to this town. In fact, he hadn't heard of a single village or borough that wasn't a part of Corner Town. While the area called Corner Town by people themselves was rather small, it was a bit larger than all of the smaller areas, and the combined area of all of the settlements that was legally considered Corner Town was quite large. He suspected that the fact that all of the settlements were referred to individually instead of by one name was probably a reason for why Heather had never heard of it, if not entirely. As a whole area it functioned without involvement with the other areas in the world, and it had pretty much everything in one place. From what he had heard the area even refused to take in goods that were produced in any area besides itself, and trading only occurred in the official area only.

The other two settlements were different though. To City was completely devoid of residency, and Gether Town was completely devoid of workplace. Although most of the people lived without bothering to say it, the two areas were basically just a very large settlement. More than half of the world's people lived in Gether Town, and the majority of those people worked in To City.

All of the schools were located in the city, along with all of the markets, office buildings, and halls. During his time in the hospital, by listening to a particularly chatty nurse that didn't seem to realize that he was conscious when she was rambling on about her love life with another nurse, he had learned that the city was where all of the hospitals were located. The town only had a single clinic, and it was only used as an actual clinic in desperate situations. It was instead mainly used as a place to have emergency vehicles for someone in the town that needed to be quickly transferred to a hospital in the city.

Demyx found it rather odd that this world's settlements functioned like this, but he had his suspicions for why that was. The odds of To City and Gether Town just suddenly deciding to function together the way that they currently did were slim to none, which more specifically meant that the reason for why the areas functioned like they did was incredibly likely to be intentional. The names of the two areas put together pretty much said the truth about their relationship alone. Corner Town's strict independence from these areas and its tendency to collect all of the smaller areas that formed in the east area of The Forest was rather odd as well. It was almost as if any area that wasn't a part of To City or Gether Town instantly became a part of Corner Town by default.

Things like this didn't just randomly happen. There was a reason for why the people here had set up their society this way, and he had a feeling that the incident that Heather had mentioned before had a good hand in it. He had actually discovered more about the incident than what Heather had told him. She really didn't know as much as people older than her knew. He had learned more of the incident's effects on his own, but he didn't learn what the event really was in the past beyond what Heather had told him.

If he knew anything though, this world was a land divided. The Mountains served as the border that kept the majority of human areas away from the majority of other animal settlements. The Forest served as the border that kept the west and the east apart. The area between The Forest and The Mountains was divided as well, however, but it wasn't physically divided. If he had to guess, he would say that the border that separated these two areas was probably their opinions. One side had one opinion while the other side had a different one. This was how conflicts arose between humans during life, and once they arose they would be a part of human life forever. It was how conflicts between anything with a heart arose, actually. It's how war was born every time.

Since he didn't recognize the area that he was in, that meant that he was somewhere to the west. The west side of the world was different than the other directions. It was composed of people that were neutral to whatever conflicts had arisen in the past, and their culture was apparently built on that.

No world was black and white; instead, it was more like a system of grey. While the main areas were composed of people that held opinions that were more like dark grey and light grey respectively, there was always a large bit of grey that was in the middle of things as well. The people that had opinions that weren't in favor of either side of the argument had probably been singled out by the people that were in favor of a specific side. They didn't have a place where they wouldn't be outcasts because of that.

The Forest separated the west from the eastern areas quite well, and the west also didn't have many dangers to it that would threaten people's safety. With that considered, the western area of the world was a good place for the people that were neutral to the conflicts to settle down without having to be bothered by the people that weren't as neutral. While it was rather extreme for these people to leave their homeland due to a conflict of opinions, some conflict of opinions became extreme.

He didn't actually care about any of that though.

The problems of these people weren't his problems. As long as those problems had no effect on him then he wouldn't have much of anything to do with them. He merely acknowledged their problems since learning about the culture of this world was a logical part of investigating it. Learning about the people of this world was only natural for him to do, and it had the possibility of providing him with more benefits than disadvantages.

Being able to blend in with the humans of this world seamlessly was one of those benefits. He had no desire to be bothered by the humans of this world, while he was still trying to achieve his goals especially, so he preferred the idea of them leaving him alone unless he had some kind of use for them.

With that in mind, he saw a few advantages to currently being on the west side of the world. It was better that he wound up here when he exited The Forest instead of winding up back in Heather's hometown that was for sure. He wasn't quite sure how that would turn out for him. He had an idea that going back there might cause him a bit of trouble, and if there was one thing that he was good at, it was avoiding any kind of trouble.

Demyx continued to walk down the road, rubbing his arms together as he did so. A nice, big coat sounded very nice right now. A knitted sweater also sounded pretty nice right now, and he really didn't care what it looked like so long that it was warm. A nice, warm sweater worn over of his shirt sounded lovely, and so did a nap on a big bed. He practically loved the thought of a nice, long nap on a big bed. The thought of being able to lay out asleep on a big bed that was perfect for sprawling out in all sorts of directions on while it still had room for one more person on it…

He stopped walking. He immediately discarded the thought that had just entered his mind and continued on walking, as if the thought had never occurred to him in the first place.

After what was probably a half an hour of walking alongside of the somewhat busy road, he noticed lights. Within a few minutes he began to see the beginnings of buildings, and shortly after that he found himself walking in a small city.

The buildings weren't all that large. There were a good lot of them, but none of them went remarkably high into the sky. The streets weren't all that large and neither were the sidewalks. He noticed that a few weeds managed to grow out of the pavement, and there were a few yards in the area. Due to the fact that it was nighttime at the moment, he wasn't all that surprised to see that there weren't all that many people out. There were more cars being driven than there were people walking. He passed by a few people every once in a while, some looking tired while others looked like they were eager to get home, but he still didn't see all that many people out. A lot of buildings seemed to be locked up for the night, and some of them were being locked up right at the moment.

As time went by as he walked on a sidewalk more cars began to go down the town streets. Slowly, as the people he passed by stopped looking like their only goal was to find any place to sleep, he watched as the night crowd began to emerge. He still took note of where everything was located in the area along with what all of the signs that were scattered about said, but he kept an eye on the people as well. Some of the rather more unsavory type of people were starting to appear, and he didn't really want to put energy into anything like a fight. It wasn't that he wasn't completely capable of handling himself in that sort of situation; fighting was just something that wasn't all that typical of a lazy coward to do.

At some point, he felt a plop on his head. Then, he felt another one. He looked up into the sky to see dark clouds hovering overhead with small droplets falling down to the ground. Shortly after that he started to feel more of them land on his face and shoulders until eventually all he could feel was them landing on him. Rain started to pour down onto the ground, coming down in sheets of it that just increased in vigor with every moment that passed.

He made a yelping sound to himself, and started to look around the area with an increased haste. By being caught in a rain shower this powerful while it this chilly outside put him at risk for hypothermia, and becoming ill was one of the last things he needed. The wounds he had sustained from fighting Heather had been one thing, he had managed to treat those with a few casts of cure magic while he also managed to seal up any of the open wounds, but this would be even worse. He needed to find a place out of the rain before he did anything else.

After some moments of looking around his eyes gazed upon a doorknob attached to a door on a building to his left, and with little regard to where the door lead to he hurried inside of it.

He shut the door behind him, eyes scanning over the area around him now. While there were quite a bit of people in this room, no one looked at him for longer than a fleeting moment before they became fixated on something else. Letting out a sigh akin to relief, he started to shake his head in an effort to get the water off of him instead of using his magic to do so. Water magic was an extinct art in this world, and he didn't want to attract any more attention than necessary by doing something out of the ordinary. These people were uninterested in him, and he was rather content to keep it that way.

With his hair no longer muddling his vision save a few strands of it, he quickly took in the area around him in further detail. It was a bar, one that neither all that cheap nor all that luxurious, mainly occupied by men that dressed in clothing worn mainly by the working class. There were a few oddities though; a handful of women, some older men, and a few that he couldn't make out from just a glance.

Knowing that he would attract more than a few sets of eyes if he continued to stand by the entrance like a lost teenager, he unconcernedly moved over to the main bar and sat in one of the stools near the end of it. He directed his head at the alcoholic bottles that lined the wall in front of him while he quickly and subtly surveyed the area surrounding him.

The majority of people here were in groups, sipping on drinks whenever they weren't speaking. Most of them were simply chugging their drinks rather than sipping, but a few of them seemed to be savoring their drinks rather than gulping down whatever was in front of them, holding their liquor quite well. A few of them weren't holding their liquor quite as well; a man further to his left on a bar stool especially. He had quite a few empty glasses around him, and he did not appear to be all that conscious. Judging by the way one of the bartenders was looking at him, he was reaching the point where he was going to be escorted out for having one drink too many. Plus, with the way he was grumbling curses to himself angrily while glowering drunkenly at a small group of people at a table nearby, the people around here were probably not going to be upset if that were to happen.

"What would you like to have, sir? Would you like to hear about tonight's special?" A bartender who had noticed his presence and started to approach him asked, still holding a dish rag in her right hand.

"No." He replied, using a tone of voice that was a bit deep, but still natural sounding. "I'd like just a bit of water. I can't get drunk today."

"Alright." She responded, putting a cup in her hand and turned on a sink from behind the bar. She handed him the freshly filled cup of water, and moved away from him after he gave her a nod, returning to her work.

He held the cup in the palm of his left hand, putting it up to his mouth to take a sip of it. He propped his right arm on the bar's surface and put his cheek in his right hand as he continued to sip. Well, it was good that he was getting some water into his body. This didn't appear to be a bar that sold food, but he knew that he would die of thirst long before he died of starvation. He could find some food later on, or even kill something if he got too hungry while he was on the move. He knew the majority of common animals that were bad for the human body and wouldn't have any trouble identifying something on the road that could kill him if he tried to eat it.

He swished the water in his cup, directing his eyes onto it for only a second as he thought. Where could Heather have gone? For some reason, he doubted that she would return to her home area. While it was possible that she wanted to return to her home, she might have thought that the house would be the first place that he would check.

It was occasionally difficult to determine what Heather would do since she wound up doing things on the spur of the moment a lot of time. He didn't doubt that it was possible that she had just ran in whatever direction that she thought he couldn't follow her in.

"Le' go o' meh! I sheh le' goo' meh! I ain' druhnk! I ava righ'tah beh ere'!"

The clearly drunk man behind him yelled, he identified him as the man that had been sitting on a stool near him, and he heard the sounds of the man struggling against two of the bartenders who were starting to drag him out of the room. He could tell with the way that the people behind him stopped chattering that they were either staring at the scene that was taking place or glaring at him. He paid no attention to this, however. He continued to swish the water in the cup he was holding around, focusing on thinking of his more important dilemma.

Why had Heather even run from him in the first place?

The very concept of it didn't have all that much logical reasoning behind it. After being attacked by a heartless she suddenly decides that she wants to attack her only companion and in the middle of attacking him she runs away? He doubted that she had planned to run away from him in the first place, and he very well doubted that it was her intention to attack him at all. Knowing her, there was a good chance that she hadn't planned any of that at all.

The possibility that she had been in a state of shock at the time, and in this state of shock she couldn't comprehend anything other than the fact that something vital to her life was under attack was decently likely. He knew her tendency to rely on her basic instincts whenever she was enduring trauma, and it made sense that she would attack anything that got near her when she felt cornered. In the state that she was in, there was a pretty good chance that she hadn't even recognized him.

No matter the reason for why she had attacked him in the first place, how she had managed to attack him was also a concern. He didn't know where she had summoned them from, but those hook swords weren't with her when they had left Corner Town. They weren't ever with her at all, and he knew for certain that they weren't kept at the house before they had left it. He knew every inch of that house by the time he had left it and in all of those inches he had never encountered any type of sword, let alone two.

Those weapons had to have been summoned somehow, but he knew for certain that Heather wasn't all that magically inclined. Very few people in this world were, and everyone that was had a reason for that. In this democratic, politically-centered world the majority of people here didn't physically fight over all that much unless in secret, and there weren't all that many sports that were based on combat. Every world had people that fought in wars of all sorts of scales, but this was the type of world where most common people had no combat training. He doubted that she had any kind of training that would let her wield weapons like that or even manage to summon weapons like that. Where could the source of those weapons possibly be?

Then there was the possibility that her attacking him was intentional.

She had been in that state before. Today wasn't the first time that Heather had entered that bizarre state where her body moved despite her seemingly being insensible. It was what resulted in him having to go to the hospital for treatment, the other time when she had attacked him. Her choice to attack him then had left him in a horrible position. He had found her on the bathroom floor at that time, unconscious. She had been able to get the first major blow in, attacking him when he didn't even consider it a possibility for her to do such a thing. He managed to avoid some of her attacks directly after that, but it left the wherever they went in the house in shambles. She summoned those hook swords and rabidly attacked him, barely stopping for even a moment. He barely had managed to summon his sitar then, and by the time he had found an opportunity to do so she had already fatally wounded him. In the fight that ensued he was severely handicapped with his injuries in comparison to her lack of experience, and he had no place to run away to in order to recover. He was on the losing end of that fight. Then, all of a sudden in the middle of fighting, she ran off. After he processed that his flight instincts immediately kicked in and by the time he had regained his proper thought process he was hidden away in the closet. At some point after that Heather found him again, only with no memories of what had happened. Then the next time he woke up after that he was in a hospital bed, and the rest was history.

He should have been more prepared for her to react this way this time. Still, her actions managed to go past his expectations. The last time he had come across her in this state he had an advantage in that he was willing to attack her, but this time he couldn't lay a hand on her. He wasn't as badly injured this time though. He should been able to catch her and got her to regain her self-awareness. That wasn't how it turned out though.

He stopped twirling the water inside of his cup around and moved the cup to his mouth again, taking another sip of the fluid. There were too many possibilities. He didn't see how thinking about them gave him any sort of benefit, since he was not going to just suddenly have an epiphany while he was thinking about such open-ended questions. When the time came he would get the answers as to why that all was, and his real current concern was finding Heather. He didn't have any real point in thinking about anything else, plus, thinking about things in such detail was not something that a person that was lazy would do.

"Being held hostage in your own home! How would you react to being in that situation?"

Demyx looked away from his cup, and he looked up at the television that was hanging down from the ceiling above the end of the bar. The local news was currently on at the moment, a female newscaster on the screen sitting next to a male newscaster. Both of them were dressed rather sharply, something typical of the newscasters of this world, and they both spoke with strong emotional tones as they probably read off the scripts in front of them. The female newscaster was the one that had spoken a moment ago, which had caught his attention due to the words she had used.

"A few days ago in Gether Town a young man was found with a stab wound clear through his abdomen and the young man was immediately rushed to a hospital in To City upon being found." The woman said as the camera focused on her instead of both of them. "A panicked young woman had called emergency services after finding him bleeding to death in a closet, and accompanied him on the ride over in the ambulance. After the man safely arrived at the hospital in critical condition the police were called in to investigate how he had sustained his injury, and were shocked at what they found."

"While the house he had been stabbed in looked normal enough on the outside, the inside was the farthest thing from it." The man continued, shifting his glasses ever so slightly. "Blood was everywhere, even dried on the ceiling. A lot of it was found in the hallway, but a good portion of it was also found in the bedroom that held the closet that he was found in. There were many signs of a scuffle taking place; wherever there was blood the furniture near it was in tatters. They even found a hole in the wall of the bedroom that was roughly about the size of an adult human head. None of this is what shocked them the most though. In the dining room of this house police found a chair that was pushed away from the table into a place where it wasn't visible from any of the windows, and on it was a large set of ropes. They suspect that a person was being held hostage here against his will, and possibly for quite a while."

"After the young man that was stabbed exited surgery the police wanted to set up a meeting with him with him to learn the details of what had had happened from his perspective, but before they could the young man had vanished from the hospital! The young woman that was waiting for him in the waiting room also vanished after going to visit him in his room. Neither of them were spotted until later during the early hours of the next day when the two were found on the outside of the house the man had been stabbed in. The man was holding the woman in his arms when he was spotted, and he ran off with her when an officer confronted him. Police suspect that the young man may have been holding the young woman, the only one of the two that is confirmed to live in that house, hostage and are continuing their investigation." The woman said.

"The young man has yet to be identified. The hospital has reported him to be somewhere in his twenties, almost if not six feet tall, a lanky build, weighs a hundred-sixty pounds, white skin, dark blonde hair that reaches his shoulders in length, and bluish colored eyes. He was last seen wearing long, dark colored clothing. The young woman on the other hand, was identified." The man said, a picture of Heather appearing behind the two of them on a screen.

"The woman was eighteen year old Heather Dean, a recent graduate from To City High School." The woman picked up. "According to friends and neighbors Heather is a rather quiet girl with a good heart, and was currently spending some time at home before she went to college. All of her friends are concerned for her safety and have denied that she would ever willingly have anything to do with any sort of shady business, no matter what. They wish for her safe return and hope that this mysterious case will be solved soon. We were unable to contact the woman's family, who are currently unreachable at the moment. Heather Dean is about five foot three inches to five foot four inches tall, has a skinny build, long black hair, brown eyes, pale skin, and was last seen in a black full-body coat. If any recent information about either of these two people is known, please call To City Police Station and inform them. There is a reward for any relevant information given to them. Now then, on to a more local case, the population of deer is starting to increase in the area. Due to the new hunting laws, the dwindling population of these creatures is now increasing-"

Demyx began to tune out the rest of what the woman said, instead refocusing on his thoughts as he drank the rest of his water. They had already made what had happened public information, and in that much detail. He had better find Heather and decide what to do next quickly. He wouldn't be in all that much trouble in the long run if he was caught by the police, since he could easily escape or just kill them, but that was not something that benefited him. What he did not like was the idea of getting caught by some scary looking guys that would make him waste time in some dingy cell when he could be relaxing somewhere and having to be separated from Heather. He had to find her soon and then do something in order to avoid them all.

He set the glass down, stretching in his chair. The rain sounded like it had cleared up a little while ago, which was pretty common of a sudden shower to do, and now would be a good time to move out to find some place to sleep for a bit while looking around the area more. Just as he was about to move off of the stool he was sitting on he felt a hand clamp on his right shoulder and push him back into his seat.

"My, don't you look like you're in a bit of a bind now Mr. Kidnapper?"


	15. To Encounter

Demyx turned his head around and stared into the deep brown eyes of the old man standing behind him. The elderly man had dark, wrinkled skin with a bit of thin white hair on his head. He immediately recognized this man as the old man that worked at The Rut, Tarana. Standing next to the old man, a middle aged man with decently tan skin and greying black hair that he knew to be Tom Senft had a hand clasped on his shoulder with a surprising amount of strength for someone his age, preventing him from moving.

The old man gave him a leering smile as the other man looked at him sternly. The older man waved a heavily clothed arm at him, and looked back towards his companion, sniggering slightly.

"Now Tommy, I think we should escort our friend out of here. The weather is quite good now that it stopped raining, and it would be nice to take a walk. Who would want to miss a chance to view the beautiful starry sky in its natural beauty anyway?" The old man said, nudging his head towards Demyx again.

Wordlessly, Tom pulled Demyx up from his stool seat, making it look like he was merely helping him up instead of forcibly moving him. He looked towards the older man next to him from the corner of his eyes for a moment before he started to slowly walk with his captive out of the bar area, going slowly enough for the older man to keep up with him. Demyx did nothing as this was happening; knowing that making any possible action against them would gather the attention of the patrons of the entire bar and would just spell out more trouble for him in the long run.

Tom walked him outside along with Tarana, and the old man shut the door behind them. He scanned the area with his eyes, not wanting to move, and took in all of the details that he could notice. The moon was a little bit higher in the sky than he remembered it, and the majority of the dark storm clouds that were in the sky a bit earlier were gone. More of the buildings around had turned their lights off, and the only thing that provided the area around them with a strong source of lighting besides the moon was a single streetlamp that was a few blocks down. He quickly assessed how many points there were in the area that any passerby could see them from. Most of the windows that overlooked the area of which they were standing had their blinds shut, and the few ones that didn't had the lights turned off. The backstreet was devoid of any driving vehicles, the only vehicles that were actually around were parked in a parking lot a little bit off to the side of the building that they were standing in front of. They were also the only people on the sidewalk at the moment. From where they were standing, there was no one around to see them.

He twitched his fingers, preparing to use some of his water magic to move the two men he was with away from him. Just as he raised his hand to summon a geyser of water around himself in order to throw the two men away from him, Tom readjusted his grip on his shoulders, forcing the Nobody to stand right in front of him as he suddenly found one of Tom's hands spread directly in front of his face.

"Stopra!"

* * *

><p>When Demyx came to he noticed that the moon was quite past its highest point, and was starting to set. A moment after that he realized that the reason for why the first thing he saw was the sky was because he was lying on his back. After that he remembered what had happened and looked around himself quickly before he imitated the position that he was in a moment prior, hoping that his movements wouldn't be noticed quite soon.<p>

He was in a grassland of some sort, he realized. He could feel the blades of grass brushing against his skin and the slight cushion that the grass provided underneath of him instead of the hard ground. He hadn't seen the edges of any trees in his visage, but with the limited directions he was able to look in he wasn't quite sure that there weren't any around. He hadn't recognized the appearance of the area around him as anything that he knew of, and the scent of the area around him wasn't familiar either. He could smell a sweet aroma, something that probably belonged to some type of wild flowers, and he could smell what he recognized to be distinctly the scent of ocean air.

He was hit by a powerful Stop spell. He estimated that he must've been under the effects of the magic for quite a few hours, and he suspected that he was quite far from the place he was at before. Why were those two men from The Rut here? What purpose did they have for knocking him out and taking him somewhere?

Did they recognize him from an earlier news program a few days and follow him here? No, he dismissed that thought. He would have noticed if humans were following him in The Forest. With all the rapid running he had been doing they wouldn't have been able to keep up, especially since he had kept away from any of the existing man-used paths in it. Had they somehow figured out where he was going without following him? He doubted that since he had gone in a completely different direction than what he had first intended, and he had been zigzagging about in the direction he had been going in to boot.

He silently realized that they might have used a long distance tracking magic against him. For some reason, his magical abilities had been declining ever since he had gotten to this world, and his ability to sense magic being used had been reduced as well. That was one of the largest reasons for his rush to get to a safe, far-off location in the first place.

The time it took him to summon his water magic was becoming longer. Under normal circumstance he would've been able to overpower those two men long before that Tom man even lifted his hand. Now the time it took him to summon any sort of magic with was taking a longer time, and even with his proof of existence Arpeggio acting as a medium he still couldn't use magic as quickly as he should've been. Even though he only had a little bit more of a decade's worth of using it, he was undeniably a master at water magic. There was a big problem if he wasn't able to use a magic he had mastered correctly, or even any other magic.

He hadn't even been able to use corridors of darkness all that well either. He could only go a certain amount of miles across the world before he couldn't extend his path any further. At first, he had only been concerned since he couldn't use a corridor to leave this world and go to another one. He couldn't even reach the Lanes Between with the ones that he could create at the moment, and if he could've at least reached there then he would've been able channel the incredible amount of darkness that the Lanes Between held to create another corridor of darkness that would have been able to take him to almost anywhere from within the Lanes Between. He had started to focus on this more after he realized that the extent of distance that he could move with the corridors of darkness was progressively declining, and that was a glaring problem. Corridors of darkness were capable of manifesting anywhere where darkness existed, and every world out there had some sort of darkness to it. His own body was practically made out of darkness, so he had a nearly limitless supply that he could dip into at any time so long as his body was still living. If he was becoming incapable of using dark magic, then that meant that there was a problem.

If he was becoming incapable of doing any sort of magic, then that meant there was a really_ big_ problem.

Why Demyx was still a Nobody he didn't know. He didn't know how any of this had happened after being defeated by Roxas, or rather Sora, all that time ago. He had absolutely no idea why any of this was happening to him after he had been defeated. He still occasionally wondered if he should've been dead. For him to be dead his soul would've had to have been destroyed, and to be a Nobody he required a soul.

Why was he still a Nobody then? He had died, right?

Still, that was something that he would have to think of later, and he effortlessly set the old thoughts aside. He was currently unaware of where he was at the moment, and he was currently unaware of what the intentions of the people who bagged him were at the moment.

For now he would lie low and listen to any information that he could gain by anyone around him while still capable of remaining unnoticed. He knew very well how valuable information was, having years of recon under his belt made that realize this as much as being a Nobody did, and he knew it would be a benefit to him to collect as much of it as he could.

If he concentrated enough then he could even listen to the directions that people around him walked in, and then he could also clarify a few locations that would he would be capable of moving to if he had to get up suddenly. A few details to the mental map of the area he was developing served a lot better than no details to his mental map.

Another aspect to this that he was capable of doing was that he could perform his lazy coward act like he usually did, since in this situation a human that was both lazy and cowardly would possibly settle for lying low until something happened; unless that lazy coward of a human happened to be a bit more cowardly than lazy, of course. In that case the human would just be too terrified to move His act was that of a human who had an almost equal portion of those traits, however, only that he was a little bit more lazy than cowardly instead of the traits being in reverse categories. It usually threw most humans off-guard, and it was a bit similar to the way he had behaved as a human, which instinctively compelled him to behave like this whenever the opportunity presented itself.

That was why he had formed this particular routine in the first place, since a Nobody was essentially the surviving will inhabiting the body of a Somebody left behind. A Nobody was technically an abandoned body that had an accompanying soul with it, but the soul had a few different capabilities that made it one. It was both the natural survival instincts of a person, the person's will to survive, and what the person considered logical reasons to survive.

The human that he was created from had an exceptionally strong will, one that still lived on inside of him. Maybe not the strongest of heart, but a very strong will. The fact that he was a humanoid Nobody confirmed it, since a Nobody was stronger and more human-like depending on how willful the human it had resulted from was. It was a fitting contrast to how more monstrous a heartless became when it was created from a stronger heart, a stronger heart which created a stronger monstrosity.

That will that moved his otherwise uninhabited body was what motivated to do things for certain reasons. Those reasons were mostly centered on survival, since the soul's purpose was really to make sure that a creature survived. A being didn't die without losing their soul, after all. However, what motivated him to act in a somewhat hassle-free manner when he could was what the human he had originated from valued. The human he had come from valued a few things in life. He had valued having the ability to express one's self freely, never having too many problems with things in life, and being able to live in a relaxed lifestyle with a happy attitude.

Those strong traits that his human-self had been preserved within his soul, and those were what motivated him to act with the fake personality that he did. It was what made living through life worth it to him, even though he hadn't had a heart to truly experience those traits in a long time. His soul drove him to survive, and those traits were why he pursued survival. That was why he had joined the Organization in the first place; to have a heart again, to make surviving completely valuable.

Without a heart, he couldn't value anything. He could pursue things, focusing on literally surviving above all else. That was how all Nobodies functioned. It was pure, unadulterated fighting for physical survival, and an unwavering pursuit to obtain true reasons for a survival. With a soul, one could pursue. With a heart, one could obtain.

Until he obtained a true relaxed nature, he was capable of dropping the coward routine as quickly as he picked it up, so long as he thought that it was necessary for his physical survival.

Nothing of real notice had happened yet. Demyx didn't hear anything besides the chirping of some early birds, and the slightly distant sound of waves. That meant that he was somewhere near the ocean for sure. He had to have been moved a pretty good distance from where he was previously if he was anywhere near the coastline. The question was what part of the coast was he on, and whether he was taken to a nearby small island. Either was possible, but he would have preferred still being on the mainland. That would require some work if the latter was true.

A bit of time passed before he heard anything else. After a few moments, he started to hear a rather peculiar sound. He didn't immediately identify it, but in the matter of a few seconds he realized that it was the sound of some humming. With the sound of a voice mingled in with the humming, he was able to tell that it was the old man Tarana who was humming, being somewhere past him in the direction that his feet were pointing at. The humming switched pitches at seemingly random, very out of tune. It continued on for a while, apparently getting worse with the passing minute.

"Tarana…" Tom started warningly.

The sound of Tom's voice was coming from only a handful of feet away from him on his right side. That meant the man was either standing or sitting close to him. In reply, Tarana changed the tone of one of his hums to a more questioning tone instead of actually speaking. If anything, he had the suspicion that the man near him only became more annoyed in response.

His suspicions were true.

"I've told you to stop that humming of yours _seven_ times now, and yet, you continue to ignore me, making sure to hum even louder whenever I happen to so much as twitch my lips." Tom said, his voice getting deeper as he finished his sentence. "I'll only put up with it for so long old man; if you don't stop now…"

"If I don't stop now you'll what, Tommy?" Tarana retorted merrily, making an almost mischievous cackle as he finished.

"I'll tell the kid that you've been stealing the expensive food from the kitchen when the cooks aren't looking again." Tom flatly said, and Demyx had to guess that he probably had a facial expression that was just as flat.

He heard the sound of a large intake of air along with the sound of a fluctuating voice, which he promptly realized was the sound of Tarana gasping dramatically. After the old man finished the first gasp he went on to make a few more, but just as he was starting to make another one he abruptly stopped, beginning to cough. In a matter of a few seconds the quiet hacking morphed into a harsh coughing fit, barely leaving the man with a moment to breathe. He heard a bit of shuffling to his right side a quick second after the more serious coughing began, which he realized was Tom shifting slightly.

He instantly stored this tidbit of information away in his head, taking note of what the action possibly hinted at. While he could have been shuffling awkwardly as he waited for the old man to stop, but his action could also suggest that he was concerned for the old man. With the way that the two got along he doubted that Tom would be bothered by something like this in such a way, since Tarana was elderly, and by being so old it was pretty much expected that he would have a few problems with his body. If he would have to take a guess he would say that the man was somewhere from his early seventies to his mid-eighties. They seemed to know each other well, and if that were the case than Tom would be used to the older man's moments of weakness. He could still very well have deeper reasons that would make his emotions towards this more complex than that, but if they knew each other at least decently well than it would be likely for him to be concerned.

Tom may very well become annoyed by the old man a bit frequently while the old man took pleasure in pestering the younger, but they truly did act in a way that suggested that they were well acquainted with each other. It was possible that they had a closer relationship than that of simple everyday co-workers, and the fact that they behaved in such a familiar way around each other was a supporting factor to that theory. He remembered that one time in The Rut Tom had acted like he knew that Tarana had the keys he needed, and he had raised his hand like he knew that Tarana was going to throw it. If he was capable of predicting the older man's actions, than he probably knew the old man for some time.

If the two were actually close to each other then he could possibly use it to his advantage later on.

The area once again became silent for a while, ignoring the old man's continuing coughing fit, leaving him to silently listen to whatever there was to be heard and to plot. The sound of birds chirping started to become more apparent, which was a sure sign that time was passing by. After a bit of time passed he started to both feel light against his eyelids, and he had to force himself to keep his eyelids from twitching in response.

"Now then." Tarana started, his voice untarnished by his coughing from a few minutes ago. "We can finally get down to business, seeing as how our young friend here is conscious now."

Demyx stilled. He tried to be as subtle about it as he could, but he was sure that Tom could've possibly seen his action. When had the old man realized that he wasn't under the influence of the magic anymore? Did he just now realize it, or did he realize it when the spell had worn off? He thought that Tom would be more likely to notice, since he was the man that had cast the Stop spell after all, and he probably didn't have a hard time telling when his spells were no longer working.

He heard Tom getting up on his right side and move towards him. He walked towards him until he stood right behind where his head was lying in the grass, and made a sound like he had crouched down. While he silently wondered what the man was doing, he suddenly found himself being picked up by his underarms. He was about to ready himself to perform some water magic if need be, but a firm hold on his arms prevented him from properly doing so.

"Don't think that I didn't notice that you were up, too, young man." Tom said near his ear as he hoisted him up. "I let you out of my Stopra spell on purpose."

He was forced to move into a standing position, and he finally opened his eyes once he was on his feet. He didn't look around himself, but he analyzed the area that he could see without having to move his eyes around.

He was right about the area he was in being close to the sea. They were standing on a high cliff that overlooked it. The sky was starting to become lighter in color, which showed him that it was a little bit past dawn, and the morning sun was on the edge of the horizon in the distance, a soft orange color. If the sun was rising in front of him then that meant that he was facing the west, and since they were standing on the shoreline of the continent that meant that they were on the western side.

He was also correct in his assumption that this was more of a field because the large cliff that they were standing on had a good amount of grass growing on it, and he couldn't see any patches of bare dirt around. He couldn't tell from his position whether there were any trees close by, but with the way the land in front of him looked, he doubted it.

He was also right about there being flowers growing here, despite the fact that the winter was still continuing. Each one of them looked to be drooping, either completely wilted or just barely holding on for the time being. What he wasn't right about whatever, was the type of flowers they were. Instead of being wildflowers, he realized that they had to have been planted. In front of him was a whole group of garden flowers individually planted in a pattern of rows, about three flowers per marker. For every stone marker that was in front of him there was a small type of flowering plant growing in front of it, making a miniature garden of sorts resting before the sunrise across the ocean.

He was in a graveyard.

Standing in front of him, at almost the very edge of the cliff a good ten feet away from him, was Tarana. He had his back to him, staring out into the distance of the ocean. He tilted his head to the side, and slowly turned around to face him, his movements a little bit more than slightly shaky. He looked at him, a blank expression on his face as Tom moved away to the side from behind him.

"I don't think we've ever been properly introduced." He said. He started to stretch himself nonchalantly after he finished his sentence, a few of his bones cracking in response, and continued to speak. "I'm Tarana. Just Tarana. I have B blood type, my sign is Aquarius since I was born on the third of February thank you oh so much for asking, and I am overall _completely_ fabulous. What about you, Mr. Thompson?"

Demyx remained silent, simply looking at the man instead of replying.

"Tell me now, Doug, was it?" The older man said in a condescending, joking tone, before he continued to question him in a dark whisper. "Just what is your real name?"

He looked at Tarana blankly, completely unaffected by the older man's suggestive attitude. The older man probably picked it up to unnerve him, or maybe it was just in his personality to speak as if he was somehow superior to others. Emotional manipulation didn't work on him at all, so he merely spent the next few moments weighing his options. He could either reply to the old man speaking with the truth, act like he innocently had no idea what the other was talking about, act like he thought the old man was completely senile, try to spin the emotional manipulation around on him, or not even bother to reply at all.

While he was more inclined to attempt to manipulate them, since he always tended to manipulate humans whenever they were around him, and was aware that he was completely immune to having the tables turned on him, he was more interested in knowing what their purpose with him was. If he was motivated to he could easily manipulate them right into the palm of his hand, but at the moment they were offering him information, all for his simple compliance.

If the situation were to become rather ugly he was completely certain that he would be able to handle the two of them. He was certain that he could at least fight Tom off if it turned out that the man had more of a forte in magic than he was aware of, and even if Tarana turned out to have some battling capabilities despite his obvious ill-health, he would still be able to fight them off. While somewhat weakened, he was completely capable of defeating two humans, two humans that seemed to have noncombatant lifestyles, at that. Plus, if things turned out to be for the worst and the two of them turned out to be a lot stronger than what he was estimating he could always run away. He doubted that the old man could keep up with him, and he had an idea that the other man would be reluctant to leave the older man. He noticed that the younger man tried to stay as close as he could to the old man; if he were to run away without getting caught in a spell he would be able to successfully flee.

At the moment though, he wasn't presented with this threat. They simply wanted to talk with him right now, even if it turned out that they had more compound intentions than that. He was silently assessing what they could actually do to him, but it was completely evident to him that they didn't want to do anything to him at this specific time. If he were to speak to them then he would be able to learn what their objectives were, so he would play along; for now.

"…Demyx." He said finally, his tone neutral. He made his voice neither too deep nor too high in pitch, adding to his blank impression.

"Demyx? That's a rather odd name you got there, but I'm not all too surprised. You're rather odd as a whole." Tarana said, wandering over towards a closer row of tombs.

Tom started to walk forward towards the older man, and then when he stood by his senior's side he turned back to face him once more. It was silent for a moment as the older man simply took to looking at a few of the tombstones, and the middle-aged one remained content to continue to watch him from where he stood.

"How long have you known?" Demyx asked, his voice still neutral in tone. He was more likely to dance around topics whenever he spoke, but he didn't mind getting directly to the point. He didn't mind anything, at all. He wasn't troubled in the least to ask about what he really wanted to know.

"I've known it since the moment I laid my eyes on you, and since the moment I laid my eyes on that girl. I've never seen any of your kind before, but I did always acknowledge that you could actually exist." Tarana said, turning away from the tombstones to face him. "A being without a heart… It's fascinating, and yet, at the same time, terrifying. My, what my colleagues would say if they could lay their eyes on you right now… my one friend would have already found a clipboard to jot notes on by now as he observed your behavior. Another one of my friends would prattle on about how dangerous you were and why we should stay a safe distance away from you while she did the exact same thing, most likely without even realizing how much of a hypocrite she was being. If she did, she wouldn't say anything about it. The other one would probably be lost in his thoughts, trying to take proper notes on you while simultaneously still struggling to deal with all the thoughts that came to his mind… in those days…"

The older man trailed off, subconsciously glancing back at the tombstones near him before he looked away. Demyx noted this, now considering the action to possibly mean that the people the old man was talking about were buried under those tombstones, or at least one of them was. He looked at the ground for a moment before he raised his gaze towards the sky, and eventually looked back at him.

"It was a long time ago. It's still fresh in my mind, but that's just because I'm old. Random old things become pretty fresh again when you hit my age." He rambled, his steady expression changing to one of distant nostalgia. "I was a researcher at the time, one of the best looking ones might I add, and I worked as one for the majority of my lifetime; I've never had another job besides it. I spent many years working on a lot of projects, each one dedicated to some sort of cause that I was glad to benefit. Everyone there did a lot of great things for the world, and heck, two of my buddies actually started a petition for the government to get a raise in our funding so that we could do more. Over the years of working there I was slowly promoted to higher positions as I went along, which I didn't mind as long as I got to continue my projects, and in around twenty years I had become one of the head scientists of the World Science Organization. There were only four of us, and during all of the years we had worked together prior to this we had become good friends. Everything was going good for a long time with only a few mishaps here and there before it finally happened…"

He looked away towards the ground, and peeked at one of the tombs that he hadn't looked at before. The Nobody listening to him took note of this, and silently tried to determine if this had any significance.

"It was a new project. At the time when we were just starting it everyone was simply abuzz about it. It was like nothing we had ever encountered before, and all everyone could talk about was that it could have been one of the scientific discoveries of the century!" He continued, looking back towards him. "In our studies, we had always made sure to include the study of humanity as well. After all, how could we devote our selves to working on how to benefit something when we knew little about it? With this we discovered a multitude of things over the last hundred years; the existence of hearts within all living things, even plants, the existence of hearts within inanimate objects, and the existence of hearts within worlds as a whole."

The older man took a moment to get lost in space for a moment, seemingly stumped by something. He put a hand to his chin, making a rather loud humming sound. The middle-aged man next to him's eyebrow twitched.

"Oh- I know! We also discovered that this was the same with other worlds; we had known about the existence of other worlds for a long while then, but it was always kept on the down low. Only a few people knew about that at a time, and the department I worked for gave such knowledge gave this information to those that they trusted with it. This is not a new concept to you however, seeing as how there are no birth records within the world that have you included, and with how strict the record system is now with this low population your record would have been found if it existed." The older man rambled; adding in another little hum that he must've known would irritate his companion. "Some of our studies included studying what humans were all composed of, of course; a physical body, an emotional core, and a will. None of these functioned correctly without the others, we had realized when we learned that people died when their soul left their body, and a recent discovery we had made at the time added a new spin on things."

It was at this time when he briefly looked back towards the tomb he had looked at a minute ago. This made Demyx consider the odds of the grave having some sort of significance and relevancy to the old man's story all the more likely. Tom actually looked towards the grave as well this time, making it even more likely that the grave had some sort of importance. Maybe the person in that grave had something to do with this new spin on things the old man was talking about.

"One of our scientists, a good friend of mine and another one of the four head scientists, was studying the workings of the heart when he decided that he would examine how things affected the hearts by observing the hearts of the people that he had regular contact with outside of the workplace. Boy; was he surprised! We had already determined at the time that two things majorly affected hearts; light and darkness. By observing people he had frequent contact with he found that the majority of people were all affected by exposure to darkness more negatively while an exposure to light usually benefited them, like what he assumed. He discovered that while almost everyone was like that, there was an exception. During his observations he had discovered that his own daughter was completely immune to the effects of darkness!" Tarana exclaimed, waving his right arm shakily in the air.

The elderly man apparently got too excited however, even though his movements didn't appear to have been all that straining, for he suddenly yelped in pain and clutched his shoulder. Tom was immediately looking his shoulder over, trying to ease him to sit down while he did so. It took a moment, but the middle-aged man was able to lower the older man down onto the ground in a comfortable position while the older man began to settle down.

The Nobody watched this with no evident expression on his face, running over the words he had just heard in his head. He had no reason to act like he was a human at the moment, since both of the two in front of him knew that he was most certainly not one and he had little interest in confusing the men at the moment. He silently watched as the man named Tom rose back to stand, and brushed himself off.

"I'll continue on from here." Tom said, looking towards him with eyes that had formerly held a strong kindness in them. That was right; he hadn't realized that he was a Nobody at first, did he? "I was a teenager at the time; I only worked there doing labor before I was recruited to specialize in magic for a few years, and then I became a researcher myself for this project a while after that."

"Something of which never would have happened if not for me, since you joined _my_ group." Tarana butted in, saying somewhat smugly.

"When the man had made this discovery his team had set to researching this development further, and they found records of this phenomenon happening before." Tom continued, completely ignoring the old man's comment. "The woman that owned the heart that was unaffected by darkness was someone called a Princess of Heart, a woman that only comes about seven times in a generation in the whole universe. The discovery of this was incredible."

"You weren't there when we discovered that. How can you say that learning this was incredible if you were never there to experience it?" Tarana asked, interrupting the younger man once again.

"I experienced learning this detail myself when I joined the study of this project, since I would need to know the subject of the project in order to study the subject of the project." Tom said, not missing a beat as he barely batted an eye in response. "Anyhow-"

"Nay, Tommy, that is inappropriate!" The older man exclaimed suddenly, cutting the younger man off. "You can't say parts of the story that you don't know for certain; it completely and _utterly_ ruins the whole-"

In the middle of his sentence Tarana started to cough, and held a hand up against his chest. Tom looked over in concern for a moment before he merely rolled his eyes and turned back to face the previously ignored Demyx as the elderly man to his side began to cough theatrically.

"The people that knew that there was a heart out there that was completely unaffected by darkness and was prevented from being harmed by it were ecstatic at the discovery." Tom continued, despite the coughing getting louder in the background. "The project that resulted was one of the most complicated and dedicated studies ever conducted. A study about a heart like that was an incredibly improbable opportunity, something that very well may never happen again with how many places in the universe one of these few women could be born. The department studying this set a goal to see if they could somehow replicate the immunity that the Princess of Heart's heart possessed to the darkness and to use the ability to do so that everyone's heart could be immune to the ill effects that the darkness produced. All sorts of factors were studied- the woman's heart, her soul, her body, the details of her parents, the details of her siblings, the details of her own husband, and her own children that were born as the study went along. They had thought at the time that this would be one of the greatest achievements in all of history if they could accomplish their goal, but unfortunately, the results that followed were quite the opposite. An unpredicted tragedy occurred. A few years into the project she fell victim to an attack by a random heartless, and her heart had been stolen away from her body. Since she was immune to the darkness she didn't produce a Nobody, so her body remained in comatose state."

"This was when things went downhill." Tarana cut in again, looking surprisingly solemn now. "The person that had found her was a scientist for our group, and he told the higher ups, the people that worked for government that all scientists reported to, what he found. Upon hearing what had happened, the higher ups came up with a horrible scheme. They lied by telling people that she had died, even her own family. They even had a fake funeral for her friends and family, supposedly proving that she was indeed dead by letting people see her comatose body. Before the coffin was buried they took her body out of it, and had a team of select individuals from the science department that were sworn into secrecy study her. This left her young children orphans, since their father had died in an accident a few years prior, filled her father with guilt, and left poor little Liron confused as to what had happened... Her younger sister took in the children, but when the world was destroyed by darkness a few years later none of the members of that family returned besides Liron. So many more bad things happened after that..."

Tom looked away from the older man's now neutral facial expression uncomfortably, and even shuffled away slightly. Tarana looked over to him, looking alarmed before he seemed to settle somewhat when he saw that Tom merely rubbed his neck before he relaxed his body once again.

"The experiments that…" Tarana started slowly, gazing at the ground for a moment. "_Those people_ conducted on her remains were incredibly dark, and during those experiments their hearts were engulfed by the darkness. The scientists that weren't a part of this, including Tommy and myself, eventually discovered this. To cover the darkness that had resulted up from the rest of the world while we tried to tame it, the remaining scientists recruited as many magic specialists that we could. As you know, our world is full of Time magic users. Time magic has been used here for thousands of years; I wouldn't be surprised if our world was the one to develop it. After we gathered these people up, we had these dozens of people use their strongest Stop spell all together, and we froze the majority of world in time for seven years; seven long, hard, years. In the only part of the world that wasn't affected by this spell, we started to work on fixing what had happened. We tried to put the world into proper balance once again, but it was no good."

This was where he stopped. He gripped his hands together at his sides, and looked back down to the ground. Next to him, even Tom looked a bit upset, as he ran a hand slowly through his dark greying hair. He turned away at some point while Tarana was speaking, facing the ocean. The sun had since passed the horizon, and was hovering slightly above it in the now light sky, no longer the having the orange tint it had to it prior.

"This was when the fighting began." Tarana continued, keeping his face towards the ground. "Suddenly people were torn apart, and in this beautiful trusting world that we had before, suddenly no one could trust anyone besides themselves anymore. Even my friends and I were torn away, despite all of the decades that we had been through together. What tore us apart was the fact that my one friend had secretly been a part of the group that caused all of this, and it devastated the rest of us. We had completely trusted him. It was horrible, to know that he had been lying in our faces this whole time, acting as if nothing was different among us, had told his best friend from the time that they were teenagers that his only daughter was dead when in reality he was doing all of those horrible things to her just to satisfy his never ending curiosity, and we had to accept him. We all worked together on getting the world back to normal, just because we had to, but from then on it was never the same. Even when we let the time spell up the fighting continued. After five more years, it hit the exploding point. The world was in chaos- the darkness went out of control. Only three years later did we get the world to settle back to normal; Melody finally got her heart back more than eight years later just to die because of what had happened to her body during those disgusting experiments. Even then, with the world somewhat together again, the damage was obvious. The population was cut in half. People were either dead or lost in various worlds. I was the only one that survived out of the four head scientists, and Tommy was one of the few other scientists that survived. The people that you would see on certain streets you passed by, the people that you worked with every day, and even the people you didn't notice very often were suddenly all gone. It was like the world was a piece of paper, and someone had just unexpectedly tore it in half. It was horrible. That wasn't even the worst thing. Worst of all- people didn't trust each other anymore. This was when everything changed. People renamed the world, and took on new names. We both kept our names, Tommy and I, to remember what had happened. This entire catastrophe lasted for sixteen years, from the day we first started to study Melody to the day that the renaming was official. This event ended seventeen years ago, and is today referred to as The Incident."

Tarana finished his story, sinking into himself from where he sat on the ground. The man's arms were shaking more than they were prior, and he raised one of them slowly up to his face to run a hand through the hair that remained on his head. Meanwhile, Tom continued to stare out into the beyond, whether he was actually looking out at the ocean or hiding his thoughts wasn't completely obvious.

The silence continued on for a moment, no one moving or making a sound. Even the birds that had been chirping in the background so frequently had fallen silent, already taken to doing something else in the early morning. All that could be heard was the breathing that came from the three living bodies on the graveyard cliff and the sound of the waves crashing into the rocks below.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Demyx asked after giving them a slight moment, completely indifferent to the emotional responses of the men in front of him.

Tom looked back to him, not bothering to turn his body to face him. Tarana looked up from his hands, and looked him in the eyes with a firm facial expression as he spoke to him.

"We're telling you this because what happened to the hearts of those people is more relevant to you than you know."

Demyx wondered what he meant by that, and opened his mouth to ask him the very same question. Suddenly, a sound came through the grassland. At first, it was a simple, far-off plucking sound, but it had caught his attention. He couldn't place why though. He reclosed his mouth, ignoring the somewhat probing looks that he received from the men in front of him. If they could hear the sound they weren't commenting on it, but he didn't care about them. The plucking sound continued for a while, steadily growing louder and louder as the seconds went by. He realized that the plucking was patterned into a melody. It took another few moments, but he placed the sound as the sound of a sitar being played.

From where he stood, he turned around, and ran. He blocked out the surprised sounds that the humans behind him made and focused on where he was going. He knew that sound. He really knew that sound. He didn't know what it was besides something that sounded like a sitar, but for some reason he just had to follow it. He had to get to the source of that noise. He had to get to the source of that noise as quickly as he possibly could.

He ran through the clearing, running as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn't bother making any dramatic movements that he would whenever he was acting like a human, completely focused on the task at hand. The grass around him started to lengthen as he went along, and as he continued to go along trees started to appear. He didn't pay any attention to this though. All he was focused on was running; running and getting to the sound of that sitar.

Eventually, what may have been an hour of time spent running across the land he started to come to a stop. He didn't know why, the sound was as strong as it had been the entire time he was running, but he felt obligated to stop.

He looked around himself, taking in the image of his surroundings. He was in a wooded area of some sort. There were trees around him, nowhere as big as the ones in The Forest, but still quite large. He was on a beaten dirt path, one that appeared to be a bit unused recently since it had various plants growing upon it. He had no idea how much time he had spent running, but his body felt like he had been running for quite a while. He started to question why he had just done that of all things, and what he was going to do about it when he heard the sound again. The sound of a sitar playing was closer than it was ever before, and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere right in front of him. He set his thoughts aside, walking towards the source of the sitar playing.

The wooded area gave way, revealing a small partially frozen pond in the middle of it. Trees surrounded it on all sides, but quite a bit of sunlight managed to come into the grassy clearing that it was located in it. In front of the pond, looking at him, was Heather.

She looked exactly the same as she had the last time he saw her; the only thing that was different was that those two hook swords she had before were nowhere in sight. She was still wearing his coat, the hood being surprisingly down at the moment, and her eyes were still completely vacant, despite having light shine on them. Her hair was a bit ruffled, but was otherwise in no way different either. She looked at him blankly, her emotional expression vacant.

He hadn't realized that he had continued walking until he was standing right in front of her. He was tempted to jump back with a yelp, something that he would do around her, but something prevented him from doing so.

She moved her head up, looking at him in the face without actually seeing him. She grabbed his right wrist, and moved his arm in front of her. He wordlessly watched as she placed his hand on the highest point of her chest, and a bright light filled his vision.


	16. To Depart

It was very dark. That was what young eight year old Heather had noticed first. She didn't like the darkness; it was scary. The darkness was like the unknown. She never knew what to expect from the darkness, and whenever she pictured something coming from the darkness she imagined something that could be described as nothing else besides terrifying. The darkness was terrifying all by itself, let alone with monsters. Just its presence robbed her of her sight, one of her most valued senses. She valued all of her senses, and just missing one made her scared. She was a little girl, a little girl that was scared more easily than other little girls, and being scared was something that she personally did not enjoy.

That was why she sat frightened in the woods, her back pressed against a large swooping tree with her legs tugged tightly to her chest. She had her arms wrapped around his calves as tightly as she could and had her hands clasped together in her strongest grip. She sobbed to herself silently, her eyes darting everywhere around her without her moving her head.

She had been fine earlier; she had been great, actually. She had been with her parents and her brother, just finishing a great dinner that had been composed of all of her favorites at a restaurant. It was a treat especially for her since she had managed to pass a big test in one of her worst school subjects. It really was great at first. She was normally so scared about failing that she got bad marks on the tests she took because her nervousness made her forget all the answers. This time though, she had managed to get a good mark on a test, a great mark actually. Even her father was proud of her, and he was usually tough to please when it came to tests.

That was when it all went downhill. She had gotten separated from her family when they were leaving the restaurant to go back home. She tried to find them, but no matter where she went she couldn't find them. She searched high and low; covering every inch of the restaurant building yet with the more time that passed the less likely she felt that she would find them.

Eventually she had finished looking through the rather large building with no luck and went outside. The moment she walked out into the night air the door slammed shut behind her, and she had turned to face it, trying to get it back open again. This was when she heard something behind her, and turned around just in time to see a big, scary looking black monster. She screamed as she tried to get back inside, hot tears streaking down her face, but it was if no one heard her.

However, just when the monster was about to tear her apart with his big nasty claws a shining light came out of nowhere, slicing the monster in half. The monster turned into a black smoke that blew away in the wind, and that's when she saw the man standing next to her.

He had two swords in both of his hands that looked exactly the same, one of which she had somehow realized was the shining light that had defeated the monster, and was dressed rather weirdly. His hair was dark in color, a shade of black that reminded her of her father's hair and her brother's hair, only that it had a very slight dark blue tint to it. His skin, what she could see of it, was cream colored. He looked away from where the monster was down upon her, and then she realized that his eyes were grey in color. This momentarily caught her attention, because she had never met anyone besides her mother that had eyes colored like those.

She continued to look up at him while he wordlessly looked down at her. After a brief moment, he started to move towards her, putting his swords on his back. Her heart felt like it stopped in place for a second before he stopped walking, standing in front of her. As she saw him lower his hand towards her she swallowed the saliva that was building in her mouth, and ran away. He may have called after, he may not have, but it didn't matter. She simply ran away, terrified by the strange man that had been with that monster thing. Her surroundings changed around her rapidly, and before she knew it, she had no idea where she was.

This is what led her to sitting underneath of this tree, lost as to where she could go now. She didn't know where her parents were, she didn't even know where her big brother was, and she was all alone. It made her very scared, and being very scared was what was making her cry at the moment.

Heather hated being scared. All it did was make everything worse when it was already bad enough, and when she was scared she had no idea what to do. She really did hate it. If this was anyone else she knew then that person would have already found the people that they were looking for, went home, and nothing else would have happened. That person would have done everything better than her and would have had the very best outcome that she couldn't get. That person wouldn't have been scared like she was. As long as she was scared, she couldn't do anything. She didn't like being helpless. It let her with nothing that she could do, and she was sick of having people having to do things for her. Whenever she was scared that was all that happened. She never fixed her own fears. Someone else always did. She couldn't do anything by herself.

Suddenly, she heard a twig snap. She looked up from where she had her head buried between her tiny kneecaps and over to where she had heard it. A person came trailing over to her, and she stiffened when that person fell over right into her kneecaps. This person, she realized, was a boy. He was quite a bit bigger than her, and was maybe around her big brother's age. She couldn't see much of anything in this darkness, but since it was so close to her she could make out his shaggy hair. She could feel, however, that he was breathing very hard, and he was shaking. After a moment passed he blearily looked up at her, his eyes widening when he saw her. He fell backwards in response, away from her. He skittered a few feet away from her into the little bit of moonlight available, and that's when she saw that his eyes were shining with unshed tears.

"Wh-who are you? Where am I?" He asked, panicked, looking around himself in a frenzy.

She said nothing in return, simply staring at him. He wore some casual clothes, just a shirt and long pants that appeared pretty normal, only that they were all ripped up. He had cuts all over the visible parts of his body, and she was sure she saw something dark stained on the rims of a big tear on the center of his shirt. He shook in a manner that was clearly due to terror, his teeth chattering even though it wasn't even that cold.

She blinked, and removed herself from her curled position. He yelped a little bit in reply, now focusing in on her instead of his surroundings. Slowly, she started to crawl towards him across the small bit of grass that was on the leaf littered ground. In response though, he only yelped again as he started to back away from where he sat.

"It's okay." She said softly, looking towards him as she continued to crawl. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to sit near you; that's all."

He looked at her with a wildly frightened look in his eyes before his eyelids started to droop back into their normal position, his facial expression calming somewhat. He nodded slightly in reply to what she said, watching her as she crawled over to him. She managed to get a few inches in front of him before she stopped and pulled herself up off of her hands, moving her knees so that she was sitting on them instead of moving with them. She simply looked at him for a moment, concerned, and he looked back at her into her tear streaked face.

"Are you okay?" She asked, having her hands hover a few centimeters above his chest, like the action would actually accomplish something helpful.

He looked back at her, shock once again marking his facial features as he began to stare at her, his shoulders shaking. She looked up at him in concern, silently wondering if something had made him worse. That was when he bit at his bottom lip, throwing himself against her chest. She started in surprise, and she stiffened. After a moment passed, her body relaxed into a more natural position as she looked down at him. She felt him grasp her shoulder sleeves tightly with his fingers while he had his arms bent up against her torso. He burrowed his face into her chest as he cried into her shirt, his larger shoulders shaking against her rapidly as he sobbed, clinging onto her so tightly that it nearly hurt.

"The-there were monsters! There were monsters everywhere!" He cried, looking up into her face. With this she realized that tears weren't directly falling out of his eyes, only leaking out as his face squished up. "There were monsters everywhere and they were destroying everything in sight an-and then there was this one monster that found me when I was hiding and-and then I-"

She looked at him for a moment, baffled. She blinked a few times before her face softened as he continued to stutter. Hovering down slightly, she started to shush him, making him stop his hysterical stammering. She quietly looked at his face for a moment at the tears that were now freely falling down it, before she wrapped her arms around him. He stiffened, clearly not expecting her to do that, and she pushed her face into the crook of his neck as she hugged him tightly.

"It's okay. All of the monsters are gone now. You don't have to be scared anymore." She said, smiling comfortingly as she moved her head away to get a slight glimpse of his face.

"R-really?" He asked against her chest, a perplexed tone laced in his voice.

"That's right." She said, putting her head against his shoulder again. "We're together now. I'll make sure you're not scared anymore."

She felt him continue to shake slightly before he stopped, remaining still. After a moment of silence he wrapped his arms around her, rising up from her chest. He moved out of the slightly hunched over position that he had been in before and instead had his head positioned to the side of hers, returning the hug very strongly.

Then, a warm feeling started to overcome her. It started from her chest, spreading out across her entire body until every part of her felt warm. The boy hugging her also gave off warmth as well, and she felt that as the warm feeling in her body grew the warmth she felt outside of her body started to fade away.

When the warm feeling completely overtook her, Heather woke up, and she completely forgot what she had dreamt of.

* * *

><p>Demyx was falling. He wasn't sure whether there was a surface that he was falling to, neither was he sure where he was exactly falling from. He was simply falling. He didn't know how long he had been falling, but that didn't matter, for he was simply falling. This strange falling sensation was oddly familiar to him; almost like he had been he had done this before. In fact, it did feel like he had done this before, many times before. It was like he had done this before, but every time he had done it he had achieved the same results: nothing, just falling.<p>

He could barely tell a thing. He couldn't tell where he was, what was happening, or even who he was. All he could tell was that he was falling. He didn't think about where he was falling to, falling from, or why he was even falling like he normally would have. He should have thought it was odd. He should have been thinking about what was happening, but he wasn't even thinking about anything besides the fact that he was falling.

This mysterious sensation was like a trance, one of which was so strong that he couldn't even think straight in. All he could focus on was the feeling of something gently brushing against the skin of his face along with his clothes and the sense of falling. In any other case he would be trying to make sense of what was happening, along with how it would wind up personally affecting him, but it was almost like he was incapable of doing anything right now. It was like he couldn't do anything else besides fall.

The sensation of falling continued on for what felt like a long time. He fell from nowhere, simply drifting wherever he was taken. In fact, the falling actually felt a lot more similar to drifting than actually falling through air. The sensation remained unbothered by any sort of changes that could have occurred, steadily continuing without any inconsistency. He continued to fall, the only thing that he could realize besides falling being the touch of whatever was brushing against him.

Eventually though, something different inevitably did happen. As he was continuing to fall he could hazily feel that his body was moving. Before it would only sway a little bit, he would go a few inches to one side or go a few inches to another. Now he felt his entire body reposition. He felt his head rising, his legs lowering to where it had been before. He was no longer falling head first, instead falling with his feet downwards. His body had moved itself on its own accord, and it had moved him into the position that he was now in.

No, he blearily thought, maybe it wasn't his body that had moved him. For a moment, his thoughts were muddled by both the confusion of what else it could be and the fact that he was incapable of thinking completely straight.

There was that thing that was pushing up against him.

Maybe that was it. He tried to focus on what it was, but with his mind as jumbled as it was, he could barely even feel what it was exactly himself. He felt it push up against him, that was for sure, but beyond that it was a bit of a struggle to tell what it was. He concentrated on the sensation of it touching him, and he slowly realized that it was indeed what was moving him. It was an odd thing. It didn't feel like a solid, but it was in no way a gas. He felt it make physical contact with him, so it couldn't just be the air. He was falling, so it couldn't be a solid either, since he would have been lying on it instead of falling if that was the case. If he wasn't falling through the air, then what was he falling through?

It almost felt like… liquid.

With this realization the foggy trance that he was in suddenly died out and he began to regain his senses. He suddenly remembered who he was, what he had been doing, and everything that had happened. He was in a liquid. The reason why the falling sensation felt more like a drifting sensation was because he was in some sort of fluid, and that fluid was making his descent feel like he was drifting because he really was drifting. The liquid wasn't all that thick, so it had to be water. It couldn't be anything besides that. What was making him move in certain directions was a current of this water pushing against him whenever he happened to get caught in one. That explained why his body had been moving in all of those directions, because the force of the current made his body follow it.

Wait. If he was underwater than how was he breathing?

He was indeed breathing, and he was somehow getting oxygen into his system because he had yet to choke. He was in something that was unmistakably like water, but yet he felt like he was breathing in air. He swished his hand around him, and as he predicted he felt water swish with it. With this action he realized that even though he was feeling water around himself his clothes were completely dry. In fact, now that he was thinking straight again, he realized that he was somehow in his coat again. He felt his hair move around as if he was submerged in water, but it was also completely dry.

How could any of this be though? If he was in water then his clothing would have had to be wet, and if he was in water then he wouldn't be able to breathe in air. His hair would've had to have been wet too, yet it still remained completely dry. It felt like he was in water, but this didn't make any sense. Just what was he falling in? Why was he even falling in the first place?

He furrowed his eyebrows, his eyebrows that were somehow completely dry, in thought, something he knew that a human would do in confusion. This was when he realized that his eyes were closed. He had been so distracted by the odd trance-like feeling and his own thoughts that he hadn't even realized that his eyes were closed shut. Cautiously, knowing that he couldn't be sure what to expect when he did so, he opened his eyes just as he felt his feet make contact with something solid.

He was on a platform of some sort. The sensation of being submerged in water was gone, and it was instead replaced by the feeling of being surrounded by air. The feeling of gravity was far stronger as well, keeping him on the ground instead of letting him drift about. He looked around and saw an expansive black sky, one that was so expansive that it never seemed to end. Grey clouds were scattered all across it, although none of them seemed to move at all, simply staying in place around the platform like a deep dark fog. A few stars glittered from behind the clouds, but they all seemed a bit dull in some sort of way. He had the bizarre inkling that told him that weren't stars, other worlds, but some sort of connections. Connections to what he wasn't sure, but for some reason he thought of people.

He looked down to his feet, and he scrutinized at what he saw. The platform that he was standing on center of was circular in shape, and the floor beneath him seemed to be made out of stained glass. The stained glass was composed of various shades of blue, most of them being darker in color, but some of them were light in color. Instead of having a remarkably elaborate design of circles and rings on it like he believed that it should for some reason, it was devoid of the majority of those things. A few rings outlined the platform, but they didn't have much of a pattern to them. What was on the center of the platform was what he really focused on though. On the center of the platform, there was an unmistakable illustration of _him_.

It was all there. The illustration looked exactly like him. The illustration was wearing his Organization XIII Coat with the hood pulled down, revealing the dirty blonde mullet hairstyle on its head, a few strands of hair falling near his teal blue eyes. The illustration was drawn in a position that made his mirror image look like he was standing straight in place, his arms kept at his sides. On the image's hands were the dark gloves he constantly wore, barely visible at the sides of his mirror image. The pants the illustration wore with the coat were slightly visible since the coat on the illustration was drawn in the style that he wore his actual coat, and he always wore his coat with the zipper undone enough to let him move his legs, which made his legs slightly visible. The boots the image had on were definitely the uniform boots he wore with the coat, and the coat was the exact same length as his real coat, since the boots stuck out enough. The facial expression of his mirror image was blank, devoid of any sort of emotions. It was illustrated in a way that made the image's face look vacant… no, not completely vacant, he realized. With the way the eyes were shaped the face looked like it had a hint of emotion to it. They almost looked longing, even.

There was no doubt that that image was him. He stared at it, trying to comprehend the reason for why his image would be here, of all places. He had never been to this place before. He was sure of it. He had never been here before, showed that he existed, but yet here was a perfect mirror image of him in the form of a stained glass illustration. Why would this be here?

Demyx heard a clanging noise behind him. He turned around to see a large, black blob formed behind him from the floor of platform. It slowly grew up from the floor, until it reached a height that was a few inches taller than him. He turned around completely to face whatever this blob was and cautiously continued to observe it. Upon his movements the circular blob itself seemed to move as well, extending two separate parts of its body from its sides, making the new appendages look similar to arms. He stared at it, forgetting his questions about the area that he was in for the moment. He had no idea as to what this blob could be, and it could possibly be a threat to him.

As he looked at it, he found that he couldn't place the clanging sound he had heard. He had quickly scanned the area around him while still facing the blob, but he couldn't see anything besides it. The clanging sound he had heard was similar to a metallic sound, like two metal objects being clashed together.

Seeing it simply stay in place, he guardedly let his eyes wander away from it to look for the source of that noise, and that's when a pair of twin hook swords came slashing in front of him. He quickly jumped away, letting the swords cut against nothing. He looked towards the grips of the blades and saw that they were being held by the black blob, which had suddenly moved all the way over to him in the blink of an eye. Seeing this, he raised his right arm in the air as he continued to look at it, visibly gathering water above him into the palm of his hand. The sound of the water rushing against itself collected into a single point right above his hand, and when the magic made a pinging sound did he lower his arm again, spinning Arpeggio into his waiting arms before he pointed his now free right hand at the blob with a purposefully superior looking grin made on his face.

The blob took this as its cue to attack. It came charging towards him with its blades at ready, which he promptly blocked with a pressurized spray of his water. When he sent a geyser of water out in the direction of the blob it vanished into thin air, and he made a noise in false confusion.

From the corner of his right eye he saw the blob suddenly flash behind him, and just barely managed to shield himself with a wall of water before the blob slashed its right blade at him, not having enough time to swing his sitar around to block the attack properly. While the damage from the blow was minimized since the thick wall of water had slowed the hook sword down, he found that when he managed to jump away from the blob a second afterwards that he had still obtained a slightly shallow gash across his right shoulder. Had the blow come in full force, his arm would have been hacked off.

The blob flashed away again and he quickly sent a geyser of water around himself, successfully hitting the blob before it could reach him. He started to strum several strings on his sitar and began walking towards the blob, having a wall of geysers start to shoot up in front of him with the rhythm of his each step he took as he closed in on it.

The blob moved quickly, a bit faster than what he could see without squinting, and it was somehow fast enough to manage to slip through the geysers in the split second that they went down when he moved one of his feet in front of him to walk closer to him. He quickly raised Arpeggio in front of him and just barely managed to block the blow of the blob sending both of its swords down against him. The blob put pressure on its left sword against his sitar while it raised the sword in its right appendage into the air, slashing at him again, and with that it started a sequence of having one sword applying pressure while it tried to strike with the other one, switching the swords' roles with each blow it made.

He struggled to hold his sitar up throughout this series of hits, trying to channel enough water through his sitar to form a counterattack. As he was performing both of those actions he managed to watch the blob throughout all of its attacks, and he noticed something off about it. A black steam-like mist was coming off of it, like the blob was evaporating. He took note of this development and finally managed to send a geyser around himself, hurling the blob away.

The blob made contact with the ground again, somehow looking more like a blur than a blob now that, while it took him a moment to notice this, there was more of that steam coming off of it. Filing this information away into his mind, he started to strum more strings of his sitar; sending orbs of pressurized water quickly out to where the blob was.

The blob reacted quickly, darting away from the orbs of water as they came to it, but after a few moments of dodging it had gotten hit by one of them, making more of that steam come off of it. Demyx sent more orbs at it, letting them rain down hard all over the platform. The blob took even more hits, and he used this opportunity to send a long line of geysers at it, hitting it multiple times. He used the moment where the blob was left stunned by the blows it was hit with to start swiftly sending orbs at it, managing to hit it each time. He started to move towards it with the orbs still charging at it, making the blob take even more damage due to the closing distance between it and the source of the orbs. The black steam was practically rolling off of the blob-like blur now, and he didn't have to focus in on the steam in order to see it.

When he had managed to move in just several feet away from the blur as he continued to attack it, it suddenly vanished, letting the orbs that had just been fired at it shoot off into the space outside the platform. He quickly sent a geyser around himself, trying to hit the blob if it was coming in for a close range attack, but this was not the case.

It waited until the geyser of water had settled down a few moments after it was summoned, and went after him when his makeshift shield was gone. He quickly had to raise his sitar in front of himself to block the slashing move that would have hit him otherwise. In the short distance between the two of them he saw some of the black on the blob dissipating, revealing a metallic gleam of some sort underneath.

Instead of using its other hook sword to try to hit his sitar again like in that series of blows it had hit it with earlier, the blur scraped the one that was currently on his sitar against the side of it, slightly damaging the sturdy strings as the blade went along them while managing to get the hook of the sword caught right in the gap between where the neck of the sitar met the three daggers on the end of it. With the use of a lot of physical strength, the blurring blob used its hook sword to throw Arpeggio away from him, essentially making its proper owner defenseless. Without enough time to summon his weapon back into his arms, the blob took this chance to slash at him with its other hook sword, aiming directly towards the center of its opponent's completely open defense.

"_Stop!_"

In front of him, the blob-like blur froze in place, its blade still in the air. He quickly took this chance to jump away from it and moved away to the side, over to where his sitar was located. The blob began to move again just as he did that, slashing at the air that occupied the spot where he was previously. The blob appeared to look at the open spot in front of it for a moment before it looked over to where he was now, picking up his sitar. It simply looked in his direction briefly and looked to its right side for a moment before it looked back to him. It dropped its swords, letting the hook swords clatter uselessly on the ground.

"Both of you… please, just stop it. Please. I don't want to see this anymore."

Demyx looked to his left, the blob's right, and looked into the eyes of a clearly distressed Heather. She was a lot paler than when he had seen her by the pond, incredibly so. Her appearance actually looked sickly, even. She was no longer wearing his coat, since he had found earlier on that he was now wearing it, but instead, she was wearing the clothing that he had had her wear when they were leaving the house to head to Corner Town. The clothing hung off of her awkwardly in some places, making her look too skinny for the clothing. Even her normally straight back hair looked a bit worse for wear too, since it looked quite a bit more messier than when had last seen it.

"Heather?" He asked, after glancing briefly at the blob near him.

She perked up at the sound of her name, and directed her attention towards him. She looked at him with an oddly sad expression on her face, bit on her bottom lip, and looked uncertainly over to the blob. He turned to the direction where the blob was just in time to see it start moving towards the spot where Heather was standing on the edge of the platform, and with sitar in hand he quickly dashed over to where she was, blocking the blob's path as he stood slightly in front of her.

"What are you?" He asked, resting his right hand near his sitar strings.

"I am a soul." An androgynous voice spoke, becoming deeper and more masculine as the dark mist on the blob faded away.

The black smoke-like fog that had been coming off of the blob for the majority of their battle evaporated into the air, revealing the form of a man. He was rather tall, taller than Demyx was by a couple of inches, and looked to be somewhere from his thirties to his forties. He was wearing faded military armor that covered every part of his body besides his head, and a long, high ponytail that held his black colored hair draped down from the top point of his head. He had an overall medium sized build, and his visible skin was a bit tan, cream colored even. The most notable feature about him was that he had narrowly shaped light grey eyes, eyes that were peering down on him right now. He looked to be quite foreign, but for some reason, the Nobody instantly identified the man as someone he was familiar with, even though he couldn't recall a time when he had ever met a person with a similar appearance to him.

"Uhm…" Heather murmured, recapturing his attention. Her voice was rather uneven, which reinforced the frail appearance that she had at the moment. "Uhm, this is…"

"I'll explain." The man said blandly as he cut her off, revealing his slight accent. He looked away from her to Demyx and continued to speak without missing a beat. "Dismiss Arpeggio, Demyx. There is no need for it."

He returned the other man's gaze, just as blandly, reacting in no way to the fact that the man somehow knew his name without it being spoken. After a moment of staring at each other, silently assessing what the other man's intentions were, he removed his right hand from the strings of his sitar and let his proof of existence vanish. The other man simply continued to look at him, and to the side he absently noticed Heather staring at him, having just seen him dismiss his sitar for the first time.

"My name is Zhou. That was the given name of the human that I originated from." Zhou began indifferently, speaking in a direct manner rather than an emotional one. "I have been here from the very beginning; that is why I know you. It was many years ago that I was a part of a human, almost two decades have passed. I came from a human that lived in a world different from the ones you know. It was a beautiful world… a land that was as strong in strength that it was in tradition and honor… a land of dragons. I was his soul. I functioned as a normal part of his living system for many years, and I would have for many more if not for the events that had occurred those years ago. It was the incident of the world you two met in."

Heather shifted uncomfortably, biting at her bottom lip again. Zhou looked at her from the corner of his eye, pausing for a very short moment. He continued to speak after she settled into a position that she appeared to be somewhat comfortable with, showing no concern for her other than that.

"Twenty years ago this world rolled in turmoil, and as this world's heart was reduced to tatters the hearts of other worlds called out to the hearts of this world's remaining inhabitants." He said. "The hearts of Aria's parents had connected with the heart of my world, along with their young son Brio, and so they all manifested there. They did not attract much attention because they had first physically appeared in a rural area, but word eventually spread about strange foreigners. They didn't look all that foreign, but they acted in a way that wasn't akin to any known culture of my original world. The human that I had come from was a part of the military, and he was a part of the group that was sent to handle these new 'refugees' when word had reached the capital. Over time, with the regular contact that my human-self had had with them, they had all became friends. Those two moved into the capital of the country that they had appeared in some time after, and settled down there. Andante, Aria's father, obtained a job in the city working in a civilian position in the military with the help of my human-self. Sonatina, Aria's mother, tended to their home while he was gone. Brio went to school in my world, and was raised in my culture. The world became their home. After about two years of living their Sonatina became pregnant, went through a normal pregnancy, and delivered Aria. That's when things were fine. The ruin began after that."

Zhou once again paused to look at Heather, and this time Demyx had an inkling as to why that was. The man in front of him had said that he was friends with her parents for some time, close friends by the sound of it. He knew about her birth and he had probably known her when he was a human. The fact that he referred to her by her former name rather than her current name was a sure sign of that. Nobodies tended to act differently around humans they had known when they themselves had hearts rather than humans they hadn't known when they still had hearts, and he didn't very well doubt that it couldn't be the same for the man in front of him.

Since the memories of the emotions they once had were imprinted upon their souls by those people, Nobodies tended to cling towards them if they succumbed to focusing on their memories. Those memories were the closest thing to a heart that any lone soul had, and if one didn't have any other reason to survive then it would blindly focus on the memories of those feelings, the closest thing that they actually had to a real reason to survive. It was similar to how Nobodies kept up the habits that they had as humans most of the time, because most of those habits had become a strong part of their will. It apparently required a stronger will to avoid clinging to memories for some, but he didn't know all that much himself, since he had never encountered anything that he had a strong connection with as a human besides relaxation and music.

The man in front of him most certainly behaved in a way that showed that he had some sort of connection to Heather, and having memories of interacting with her when he was a human did seem to have an influence of him. The man had discarded his weapons before his opponent had discarded his, simply because she had joined in on their presence.

"Their home world, the world that they had come from, was peaceful once again." Zhou continued once again, shifting his gaze from Heather. "Its heart started to beckon them back, along with the rest of its former residents. They were presented with a choice though. Hearts are complicated. Deep in their hearts, they had then considered themselves actual residents of my home world, and they were reluctant to leave. Their hearts did not completely connect with their home world because of that, and they didn't leave immediately. This was when Andante had come to my human-self for advice on his predicament. He wanted advice on whether he should forget about what he had left behind to continue on with the way that he was currently living or if he should return to try to reassemble what he had lost. What he received upon asking was not advice, however. As a human, I had a bit of a temper when it came to personal matters. My human-self had become infuriated that his friend was actually thinking about leaving, and had reacted rashly, yelling at him that he was foolish to even consider returning to a world that had brought him so much misfortune in his life. That outburst escalated into an argument between the two of them, and from there it had escalated into a fight. The brawl left both of them furious, and Andante was convinced to just leave my world out of spite."

Once again Zhou paused to look at Heather. She noticed his eyes on her and squirmed accordingly. The man looked indifferently upon her actions before he turned his eyes to Demyx, facing him as he continued to speak.

"Before that happened though, something else did. It turned out that the chaos of his home world wasn't completely finished yet, and a group of heartless managed to make its way over to my world. Without any proper way to eliminate them, they did massive damage. It was right after the fight between the two of them that one of them had come across my human-self. My human-self was tired from the fight, and he could barely defend himself. Andante wasn't all that far off when he must've felt that something was wrong, but it was already too late, for when he returned to the place where the two of them had fought the heartless had already taken my heart." He said, staring unblinkingly into the eyes of the Nobody in front of him. "My body was destroyed beyond repair. It was quite a rare occurrence, since heartless focus on hearts instead of bodies, but it happened nonetheless. As you know, heartless are incapable of damaging souls in order to actually kill unless they had some sort of source beyond their own powers, so as a soul, I hadn't vanished. Without a body to inhabit my existence was pointless, so I followed Andante back to his home, where he returned to his family. With the supposed death of their dear friend they were completely convinced that they should return to their home world and try to move on. Before they did, I had seen an opportunity. I had found in my first moments as a remaining soul that I was pointless and did not have a reason to survive. I saw a plausible reason though. In the home of my friends' I saw a reason for my half existence, a reason to continue on; the baby. With how young Aria's soul was she couldn't properly take care of herself without outside help, and she wouldn't be able to survive without someone to care for her. I had the need to inhabit something, and as a baby she was the best of the options there, since she was the least likely of them to survive on her own. As a baby, she was also unbiased to either light or darkness, but was still capable of being enveloped in either. She wouldn't have been able to protect herself from either, which made my reason stronger. Before they left for their home world I entered Aria's body and settled in her heart, which has led to the situation before us now."

He stopped talking to move away from them both, walking towards the center of the platform. He summoned the two twin hook swords, which must have been his own proof of existence, into his hands before he attached them to the back of his armor, turning around to face them from where he stood.

"From then on I took on the role of making sure that she survived along with her natural soul, which I have maintained due to the fact that her will is weaker than mine. I will maintain this role until the day she dies, at which time I will die as well. I was going to let her die of old age, and nothing had arisen that threatened that fate; until _you_ came, of course." Zhou said blandly even with the bitter way he phrased his words, staring intently at Demyx. "You were a threat to her life. When given the chance, I overtook her body. During those two times you had been attacked by her when she was unconscious I had been in control of her body, trying to eliminate you. I had never had the chance to do so before that happened. The first time she never realized what was happening, but I was forced out of control as she naturally regained her consciousness again. The second time however, the most recent time, she did. She started to fight for control of her body when I had control since she didn't want you eliminated, and that was why I had her run away from you. With you away I was still able to keep my hold on her, and I was free to plot a way to go about eliminating you in without her rebelling again. That was until_ he_ interfered and she got control of her body again. She didn't have full control since I was still fighting against her will, but as this was happening, you appeared. Before I could stop her, she used the little stable control she had of her body to let you in here. That explains how this happened. That's all I have to say. She can explain the rest of the details to you."

With that, Zhou simply looked away from them as the black surrounded him once again, and as a blur he sunk into the stained glass floor of the platform beneath them, leaving the other two alone.

Demyx turned to look at Heather, who was once again biting her bottom lip. She noticed his gaze and tried to smile at him, only that it looked more nervous than she intended. She turned to look behind both of them, and he followed her gaze to see several sheets of stained glass away from the platform in the space beyond it, hovering in the air. They were all multicolored with small circular shapes on them colored, all of them colored with bits of red, yellow, green, and blue. She started to walk over to the one closest to the platform's edge, and he walked after her. After nervously looking at the black abyss below for a moment, she started to use the sheets of glass as stairs, walking down them. He walked down them with her, having no fear to prevent him from doing so.

"Well that guy was something, right? He explains his whole life story and then he just leaves. He didn't even say goodbye or anything; he just left. Well, whatever. If he's just that kind of guy then he's just that kind of guy. You seemed pretty interested in what he had to say though. Was that all news to you?" He said, speaking only with the intentions of getting her to start to speak as well.

His idea worked, for with his words she perked up, and when he finished she began to reply to him.

"Zhou… He's always like that. I know he was sort of, uhm… blunt, when he talks, but he doesn't mean anything by it." She said, twiddling her right fingers, but she didn't look all that nervous. "He just likes to get directly to his point. That was actually chatty for him, really. He normally just says one sentence when you talk to him, and even if you ask him to explain something in detail he would just say two sentences instead of one. He's usually quiet. Not because he's shy, but I think that he doesn't like talking all that much. I've never heard him speak anything more than three sentences at a time, so that was a bit... interesting, to say the least."

He made a noise in agreement, nodding his head in response to her justification for his behavior. If that man was indeed a soul, then Zhou was a completely emotionless being, and everything that Heather said about him was just her instinctive need to imagine him with human traits. There was no real reason for him to mention that however, so he simply let her assume whatever she wished.

"…I really was interested in what he had to say. He had explained all of this to me before, but he had explained it to me with a lot less detail than he did now… I like hearing about the world I was born in." Heather said.

She looked away from him, down at where they were walking to for a moment, a large column of some sort. He turned away from her, looking at the spiraling glass plates that they were walking down as he continued to ponder what had been happening. After a few moments of silence, she returned her gaze to him. He didn't look directly at her, but he was aware that she was looking at him. He let her do that for some time before he decided to return her look. Upon making eye contact with her she gasped slightly, and quickly averted her eyes.

"Every time I hear about that … something about my family I didn't understand before suddenly makes sense." She started as she slowly turned to face him, wavering slightly. She seemed to be bothered, but her tenseness decreased as she continued to speak. "The first time he had explained the story to me I figured out a lot of things. I realized that the reason for why my brother never seemed to like anything at home was because he liked everything in that world better. I learned that the song that my mother hums whenever she's cooking is actually an old ceremony melody from there. I learned that the reason for why my father has always been strict about certain things was because it was the norm to be strict about those kinds of things there."

She paused again, looking at where she was walking instead of at him. She licked her bottom lip, and he took note of the way that her eyes just seemed to dart towards him for a quick moment before she moved her gaze back to the way that she was walking. Her posture was a bit stiff, and she seemed to tense right after they made eye contact for that brief moment.

"It's just… sort of interesting to hear things about that place. When he explained what had happened to me before he didn't mention the fight he had with my father... well, the physical fight that is. He told me that they argued, but not to that extent. I don't know why he would edit that out… maybe to spare my feelings, or to avoid losing face…" She said, looking at her feet. "I don't really understand what face is, but apparently it's really important to him back in his world. My father would talk about it, too, but I never really understood it. To explain things in all that detail though… I actually think that was his way of being nice to you. I know that he can't be genuinely nice, but… he can't like or dislike anything as far as I know, so he doesn't have anything against you. I think…"

He didn't bother to say that his thoughts contrasted with hers. While the man wasn't capable of disliking anything, he had the inkling that if the soul could dislike him, he would. It only seemed natural, seeing as how he had singlehandedly ruined the man's entire devotion for existing without even realizing it. Demyx didn't think that the man would like him all that much if he could after holding the woman that he was trying to protect hostage in her own home for several weeks and endangering her life multiple times.

Instead, he merely raised an eyebrow as a sign that he disagreed with her sentiment, but otherwise didn't pay all that much attention to her rationalizations for his behavior. If it made her feel better, then he would let her rationalize all she wanted.

What he was more focused on was that she seemed to have a concept of the fact that Zhou didn't have a heart. If she understood that, even a little bit, then it confirmed that she must've heard this before. He didn't expect her to lie to him, she wasn't much of a liar anyhow, but sometimes her views of the world around her tended to be a bit off from the actual reality. She was like other humans. She saw things the way that she wanted to see them and the way that she was capable of seeing them. She appeared to understand the man's lack of a heart somewhat, but she still subconsciously added human traits to him.

Knowing her, if this information was really new to her then she would be focused on trying to understand it completely instead of anything else. She would be too occupied to speak to him as clearly as she was now, and she wouldn't understand all that much yet. It was how she processed things. She had to have heard about what the man had said before like she had said.

"All of that was true then?" He asked, looking over to her as they descended the staircase of stained glass.

She slowed down for a moment, turning to face him instead of where they were going. Her expression was as meek as ever, but he could tell that there was some other emotion lurking within her at the moment. "Yes… he's always been here. He never physically revealed his presence to me, but I always knew he was here, deep down. It took me a while to realize it. Now… I have to explain everything else to you, I guess."

They were at the end of the makeshift staircase. She walked off of the last sheet of glass onto a different platform, one similar to the one they had just been on. He looked to the floor of it to see stained glass once again. However, unlike with the lively colors that the other one had, this one was grey in color. He didn't know why, but he instantly decided that the grey coloring was almost sickly. All of the rings and patterns were starting to fade away, leaving nothing besides white behind. Once he stepped foot on the platform himself could he see the very faint outline of what looked to be an illustration of a person on the center of it.

"This… this is my heart." Heather said, standing in the very center of the platform. This was when Demyx realized that she practically blended in with the washed out surface below her, looking rather worse for wear herself. "There's a really specific reason for why you turned up in my world, in my house. Your home world was attacked by the, uhm, heartless, and that's when you lost your heart to darkness, right?"

Deciding not to react shocked by the revelation that she knew that he didn't have a heart, he merely nodded in reply, completely devoid of emotion over all. She looked at him for a moment, something like uneasiness in her expression, before she continued.

"Your heart was taken away by a heartless then, and it created a new one." She continued, biting her bottom lip. "After a while a Keyblade wielder destroyed the heartless that was created from your heart. The Keyblade wielder decided not to collect your heart, so your heart was allowed to go free. Your heart just wandered for a while, not having anywhere to go. Apparently this sort of thing has happened before. Hearts… hearts are pretty weird, I think. I don't really understand all of this, yet, but I know that your heart was looking for a place to go. You were a Nobody, so it couldn't return to you. It was maybe around ten years ago when this happened, and I only remembered the details recently, since it was so long ago. Your heart found its way over to my world, and it found me. I was just a child at the time. I didn't really know what was going on. All I know is that for whatever reason I reacted to it, and out of all of the billions of other places it could go to it went into my heart. Zhou told me that, since he's a soul, he focused on keeping your heart under control for all this time so that the balance of my existence wouldn't be disturbed. So yes, uhm, if you were wondering, that other big platform up there is actually your heart."

Demyx silently took this new information in, many questions coming to his mind with her words. That explained so much, yet it explained very little. He looked at her blankly, as blank as a Nobody could be, and then spoke what was on his mind.

"There's more to this isn't there?"

Heather jolted, looking rather surprised for a moment. Then she looked down, chewing on her bottom lip with a new ferocity.

"I-I… back then, I remember. I remember getting your heart now. I hadn't remembered before, so that's why I didn't recognize you, even though your heart has been with me for so many years. I… I had forgotten the chain of memories that involved your heart, even though I had known, deep down... of all times… back then, I was… I was… I was scared. I was scared of being scared. I was scared, all the time, by every little thing, and everyone had to take care of me. I was just a child at the time, but I still felt guilt about it… a-and I felt ashamed. I felt like a burden on everyone, and I all I could ever do in return was nothing, just bring them more trouble. Fo-for once I wanted to be something else. I wanted to be the one protecting someone scared, not the other way around. I didn't want to be scared anymore. I… I was just so _sick_ of it!" She declared, tears starting to fall down her face as she continued to direct her head towards the ground. "I hated this fact about myself so much, and I hated myself for not being able to do anything about it! The worst part was that I was so scared I couldn't focus on being mad at myself, since I was too busy being scared! Then, at some point, your heart appeared. It was so… fragile. My mind didn't know what it was by just looking at it, but my heart recognized what it was. I knew that as a heart without any protection it was incredibly susceptible to getting damaged, and for a moment, I stopped being scared. There was someone with more reason to be scared than me, and suddenly I was calm. I realized that I could take care of it. I could take care of this heart, and I could be the one taking care of someone scared for once. I didn't have to be the burden. I could do something right! I was so happy, but at the same time I was still a bit scared, too! I took this chance to actually do something for someone besides myself for once, to not be scared for myself, blatantly ignoring the consequences."

"Consequences?" Demyx repeated. He looked at her with a purposefully made confused expression, for if he had his heart he would indeed be confused.

She nodded, tears flying away from her reddening face with the action, audibly struggling to hold her sobs back. She opened her eyes, gasping in air slightly as she started to pant from the crying.

"R-right." She stuttered, the tears on her face slowing as her lips trembled. "There were consequences for taking in your heart. I realized that, but I took your heart in anyway. I learned that when and if it was possible, your heart would try to go back to you. You were the place where it truly belonged; I was just a stepping point. I don't know much about the Keyblade, but I learned some things. The Keyblade isn't a weapon that separates souls from bodies like other weapons do… killing people… it's a weapon that has to do with hearts. That's why other weapons can't destroy heartless, because heartless don't have souls. They can harm them physically, but they can't do anything to the hearts that they thrive on. That's why the Keyblade can destroy them, since it can do that. That's also why Keyblades can't kill anything, since they sort of have the reverse effect of actual weapons..."

She took a moment to pause, sniffing. She rubbed at her eyes, but tears continued to fall out of them. Seeing that it was futile, she stopped doing so, and continued speaking, avoiding direct eye contact with him.

"When you were defeated by that Keyblade wielder as a Nobody your body was unlocked by it, rather than having your soul destroyed like any other weapon would do, and it created a path for your heart to get back to you. That's why you appeared in my world, since you were starting to merge back together into a human... when your heart will leave my body, it will need a clear path to get out… My heart is in the way, so it can't get back into your body. In order for it to get back, my heart needs to be out of the way, so when your heart leaves my body it'll move my heart out of the way with it. I'll lose my heart." Heather said.

She looked up at him again, tears running down her face as she smiled at him. This time he couldn't restrain himself and he took in a deep breath instinctively when he saw the look on her face. He didn't know how to react in this situation, and his natural instincts took over him a bit instead. He slowly stumbled over towards her, and he raised his arms, letting them hover over her as her body started to glow in a pale light.

"That's why you're here right now. You're here to get your heart back." She said, continuing to smile. She looked at him and apparently noticed an expression on his face that he didn't know he made. "It's alright. I knew this the day I took you heart in, and I knew this would happen right now when your heart called out to you from wherever you were before you found my body by the pond."

He took this information in, staring intently at her face as the tears continued to flow without her consent. She didn't bother to raise a hand to stop them, but only continued to look at him as the light grew.

"I'm fine with this. Zhou told me that he's going to do something with my soul to prevent me from becoming a Nobody since he doesn't want me to become one, so you don't have to worry about that. I got to do what I wanted back then; I finally got to stop being scared. Now you can be a human again."

With that, the two of them continued to stand by each other in silence. The only thing that changed around the two of them was that the light was continuing to grow, and it was starting to hurt his eyes slightly.

"…you know, if I had been a human when we had met, I think things would have happened differently, Heather. I forced you to be around me because I needed you for my own reasons, not because I wanted you to be with me." He said, watching as the light surrounding her body grew brighter. "I think we would've been together, because we both wanted to be together."

"…I think you're right." She said after a moment, looking him in the eyes again. "After everything happened, I figured out that I just wanted to be around you, even if I subconsciously realized over time that you're the shell of a person instead of the real one. I liked the human you. You kept me from being scared. When your heart went in mine that's when I started to act more confidently. I started to feel like I wasn't alone when I was scared. I had to protect your heart, and that responsibility encouraged me to do things that scared me, even though I was still afraid. It gave me courage. I knew from your heart that you were the body of the person that had helped me whenever I was feeling scared before and had understood what it was like to feel that scared. Even though I was always timid, there was a part of me that was always happy to be around you."

He watched as the light around her started to envelop her, making the visible parts of her form fade away from his vision. Underneath their feet, he noticed that they remaining outlines on the whitish grey stained glass were fading away, and the flat surface of the platform itself was starting to turn white.

"…I never got to play my sitar for you." He said, looking back to her.

She shook her head side to side, the smile on her face actually growing, even if it might not have been in happiness. "No. Not really. When your heart called out to you I got to hear you play your sitar. I heard it, too. I got to hear one of the melodies of your heart when it was looking for you, and your heart got to hear me sing all of the time, ever since I finally worked up the nerve to actually start singing. I really did get to hear you play your sitar, and you got to hear me sing, even if you don't remember it without your heart right now. You'll remember though. You will."

They remained silent, looking at each other. He continued to watch as the light grew around her, the platform beneath them nearly completely white. Her body, the appearance that her heart had produced, started to vanish from sight within the light. He reached his hand towards her face, to try to comfort her in a moment when she was the single one of them that felt pain, only for him to make a shocked noise instinctively as his hand went straight through her. He stared at her, not bothering to move his arm as he gradually processed what that meant.

"…goodbye, Ar… Goodbye, Heather."

She smiled at him, trying to bite down on her bottom lip without him noticing. She reached her barely visible hands up to hover near his currently outstretched one, a smile still on her tearstained face.

"Goodbye, Emyd."

He stared as the light fully enveloped her, which in turn made the vision of her fade away into nothing just as the remains of the stained glass image at his feet had been wiped away, leaving the platform a stark white, devoid of anything else. The lyrics of a song he didn't know winded through his head in the form of a familiar voice as a warm feeling in his chest began to burn. A pair of steel hook swords appeared at both of his sides, as if to give him company, clattering against the blank floor. Slowly, he slunk down onto the floor as well and stared at the surface, not bothering to acknowledge the blades that had appeared. Feelings started to overtake him for the first time in a very long time, and for the very first time, he was left alone without anyone to find his aching heart as he wept in sorrow.


	17. An Epilogue of Dying

_All the pieces lie where they fell._

In a far off apartment of Gether Town, one that was peculiar in that it was rather far away from any other apartment buildings or any other residencies, a man was lying on his bed. It was a rather large bed, one of which he was fully capable of sprawling himself out in any direction that he pleased. He was indeed quite content to spread himself out on it in a multitude of directions hardly finding a moment when a limb would drape off of it. It was so large that even when he spread out on it far as he could, there was still enough room for one more person. It took up the majority of the small bedroom area and a good portion of the casual area, even being repurposed as a couch, mainly because it took up the only space where a couch could be put.

The man rolled over on his bed, groaning in annoyance as he felt something press into his side. He half-heartedly tried to grab whatever was pushing into his side with his hand, but whatever it was wasn't moving. He gave up on grabbing it after another brief moment, lying back down in a sleeping position.

The object continued to press into his side.

He grunted in irritation. After enduring it pressing into his side for several more minutes, he accepted that sleep would not come to him as long as it was there. Lethargically, he twisted in place, hoping to pull it out from underneath of himself that way. Instead, he yelped, suddenly bolting upright into a sitting position as whatever had been pressing against his side decided to cut into his side this time.

He reached his hand down again to pick up the offending object, and glared blearily at what he recognized to be his hair comb in the dim lighting that was provided by the faint light coming from the miniature aquarium in the corner of the room. Apparently the blunt side of the comb had been what was digging into his side, and when he had tried to shift it out from underneath of him it only flipped over to the side that had the teeth on it. He had been looking for this comb.

He picked the comb up, observing it as he rubbed at his eyes with his opposite hand. After seeing that a few of the teeth were speckled with something red, something that he highly suspected to be his blood, he tossed the comb onto the floor, flopping back down onto the bed. The comb didn't make a sound, probably landing on one of the many messy piles that littered the ground.

The room was littered with all sorts of things. There were piles of dirty clothing lying on the floor, since the man that owned them lacked to own a laundry basket to put them in. There were only a few makeshift paths in between the clothing that a person could walk on, but those paths still had various objects on them.

It wasn't just the floor that was messy. The entire apartment was in some sort of manner of disarray. The man spent only so much time cleaning the place, and half of the time when he thought of cleaning it he was too lazy to bother doing so. He didn't really care about the state of his apartment, though. The man simply made sure that the rooms were livable, and he took care of the important things in them. Otherwise, he ignored the dirty state of his apartment.

Despite his constant ignoring, the room wasn't a complete mess though. There were a few things in the apartment that he seemed to take especially good care of, more so than other things. The tank of bog turtles that rested on his cluttered dresser against the back wall of the room was in good condition, and the turtles swam through the water inside of it leisurely. Two twin tiger hook swords hung neatly against the wall, positioned so that they were evenly crossed together. The remarkable condition that they were in clashed with the rundown state of the wall that they were hung on, and they almost seemed out of place when compared to the rest of the apartment. Near the tank of turtles, a beautifully crafted sitar rested against the wall, its ornate indents gleaming in the morning light.

Now that the object that had been keeping him from his sleep was gone, the man lying on the bed turned over once again, trying to fall back asleep. He kept his eyelids gently shut, willing sleep to take over him once again.

This was when the spring birds that nested in the tree beside his window decided that now was the perfect time to begin chirping.

He scowled in response with his eyes still closed, and he felt one of his eyebrows jerk as he tried to ignore the noise. After a few more moments of trying to block out the sound of the birds chirping outside, he felt his eyelids twitch as sunlight came in contact with his face. The dark vision he had in his eyelids gradually started to become lighter, and he turned over once again in the opposite direction of his window, letting his closed vision go dark. Even with the light out of his eyes he found that sleep still did not come to him, mainly because no matter what he did he couldn't successfully ignore the sound of the birds chirping.

After a few more minutes of trying to beckon sleep to come to him, he eventually sat back up, and half-heartedly stretched. He groggily turned his head to the side, looking out the partially open window at the tree where the birds were perched, chirping away. He leaned towards the window, resting his elbow on the windowsill while he used his hand to balance his right cheek as he blankly watched the birds interact with each other, hopping from branch to branch.

_Where they wait for him..._

"Sora…" He murmured, staring out the window at the sky, losing himself to his thoughts. He thought about several things, letting the thoughts leave him as quickly as they came to him. He thought about his life, he thought about his supposed death, and he thought about the life that he currently had, one beyond his own apparent death.

He thought about the soul of a man that had long since left, to where he didn't know, but he knew that wherever he was he had still yet to be blessed with the death that he sought. He thought about that man, a person of whom he had only physically met a handful of times, yet had known for a very long time. The bond that they had wasn't one that was created out of fondness, but out of something much more complicated.

He thought of a woman that was miles away from him in To City, probably lying in a bed right now just like he was, only in a hospital instead of her own bedroom due to the fact that the hospital was taking care of her while she was in a bizarre comatose state that no average doctor in the world was familiar with. He thought about her as well, the woman that may very well be dying just because he wasn't.

He placed a hand on his chest, feeling his steady heartbeat beneath his fingers through the thin cloth of his pajama shirt. He continued to stare out of the window at the sky, merely thinking. The sky, something he had never felt any significant connection to before, was the only thing left that made him feel as if there was any hope, for anything.

Unbeknownst to him, far out across that sky, many worlds away, a brunette boy that made his home on a tropical island was preparing to leave on a journey; a journey to save the hearts of all of those with hearts that needed help, and to finally mend all of everyone's hurting by returning to end it. He would venture out into the unknown with the help of his friends, ready to aid anyone that suffered, just like he had on the journeys he took before. He would even help those that he may have been wary of before, so long as they needed help. If he could, he would be more than willing to help the soul, the woman, and the man. He would do all he could to save them, no matter what had happened in the past, because he would know that they needed to be saved. Except that, while this boy would devote himself to his goal of helping others as limitlessly as the sky itself, there were some places that not even the sky could reach.

Water flung towards the birds perched on the tree, making them fly away, effectively silencing their chirping. The man shut the window with a quick slam, fastening the lock closed. He speedily pulled the blinds down with the side rope and rotated them until they lied flat. His surroundings were dark once more as he lied back down on his bed with his back towards the window, the blinds blocking out the view of the sky.

_Reconnect._


End file.
